Speaker 0:  we've been burning and burying plastics for decades because the chemical bonds holding them together are practically indestructible. our brand new room temperature chemical reaction just broke all the rules, giving us literal reset button on both permanent plastics and life saving cancer drugs. so this new reaction unlocks infinite recycling. scientists have discovered trysulfide metathis metathisis. john will pronounce it properly in a minute, i guess.

Speaker 1:  i thought metathisis. but

Speaker 0:  metathisis is probably correct. trisulfide metathesis, a process that instantly breaks and reforms ultra strong sulfur bonds at room temperature without triggering agent. it allows researchers to unmake and remake complex materials on demand in seconds. this effectively makes true closed loop recycling a reality for stubborn plastics and slashes the time it takes to engineer targeted medicines. what do you think about this, john?

Speaker 1:  so before i tell you, you were right. it's metathesis. so, i was yeah. i thought i was saying it. i thought i didn't even look it up because i'm like, oh, it's metathesis. but, no, it's metathesis. sorry. so i think this is cool, because this new reaction, it acts almost like a molecular swap system where parts of molecules can rearrange themselves cleanly and efficiently. so in simple terms, they found a way to make some of the toughest chemical bonds flexible and reusable, and that could transform drug development and plastic recycling. so why do sulfur bonds matter? well, sulfur bonds are critical in proteins, pharmaceuticals, and materials like rubbers, polymers, and plastics. so, historically, these bonds are strong and stable, and they're hard to selectively break and reform. so what the new reaction enables, a controlled, reversible manipulation of these bonds, which something that was previously extremely difficult. and so instead of breaking a bond forming a new one, this reaction allows a direct exchange between molecule molecules. so think of it like two molecules swapping parts without fully falling apart, which i i don't i don't i don't know if people can understand how much that blows my mind, which is super cool. because normally, things fall apart. things like, when they break up, they they the bonds and all the bonds are dimming up. so it's cool because this process is fast. it happens in seconds. it's reversible, and it's highly efficient. so the key innovation here is that reaction is triggered by specific solvent environments and not added chemicals. so that means the environment itself controls the reaction, and there's no extra reagents, and there's a cleaner chemistry. so, this is cool for green for those green people. but, yeah, what do you think about this? i'm super excited about this.

Speaker 0:  yeah. to humanize your example about swapping atoms

Speaker 1:  oh, sorry.

Speaker 0:  think of traditional sulfur based plastics like lego blocks glued together with industrial superglue. you have to literally melt the whole structure to separate them. with trisulfide metathesis, that turns super glue into high powered magnets. and with the right chemical environment, they just click apart in seconds, completely undamaged and ready to be snapped into something entirely new. so they just come apart, and you can reorder the items any way you want. the lab breakthrough was just published in, march a couple of weeks ago, and we're expecting some commercial and industry scaling, but that's years away. this currently operates at 20 to 25 degrees celsius, replacing legacy thermal requirements of 80 to a 150 degrees celsius, so this is, room temperature, and targets three sulfur atom chains, the trisulfides. the reaction relies on a short lived trisulfoxide intermediate in the presence of specific solvents, dmf, dma, and nmp. the fragments attach to the ends of the trisulfide chains and spontaneously swap in a single concerted motion bypassing the need for a traditional catalyst region. so this is arguably the biggest leap in polymer synthetic chemistry since the discovery of olefin metathus with metathasis, is, a nobel prize in chemistry back in 2005. yeah.

Speaker 1:  and this is this will help along with remember that bacteria that we cover that eats plastic that was developed that the earth developed? so this with that so the thing with this is that they've already shown that they can modify anticancer drug molecules, and they can create recyclable polymer systems. so that means that there's already applicability, and it's not just theoretical. so this could happen. this could come to commercialize very soon.

Speaker 0:  yeah. and specific anticancer compound modified here, the calichemycin is the antitumor antibiotic derived from the bacterium found in chalky soil. it is so notoriously toxic that it cannot be administered on its own. it must be tethered to targeted antibodies to avoid killing healthy cells. so, we can modify that with this process now instead of using this toxic treatment. mhmm. the atomic and chemical industries have spent billions over the last century trying to solve the exact sulfur bond problem for vulcanized rubber. over a billion tires are discarded annually because those sulfur cross links couldn't be officially reversed till now. and sulfur is universally famous for foul, rotten egg smell of hydrogen sulfide or brimstone. however, because trisulfide chemistry swaps the molecular fragments so rapidly and securely in solvent, the reaction doesn't release the volatile gas that causes that stench.

Speaker 1:  mhmm. yeah.

Speaker 0:  alright. so, let me try it one more time. trisulfide metathesis rewrites the textbook on sulfur bonds, turning previous indestructible materials and complex drugs into highly editable code. lets, if this lets us successfully recycle a 100% of our plastics, does that give massive corporations a free pass to keep producing single use packaging, or is this ultimate win for the planet? let us know what you think in the chat.