The transformation of chemical energy into mechanical energy is elementary in our lives, not only moving cars and airplanes, but pumping blood in our bodies and moving our eyeballs as we read these lines. The reverse action, defined as mechanochemistry [1–3], is to make chemical transformations using mechanical force, and finding simple examples may be challenging for people unfamiliar with

Forceful retraction of a bacterial pilus has been directly observed for the first time. As retraction clarifies the basic mechanochemistry of single cell twitching and gliding movements, so cell-to-cell signalling by contact clarifies the coordination of multicellular gliding movements.

This review aims to provide a field guide for the implementation of mechanochemistry in synthetic polymers by summarizing molecules, materials, and methods that have been developed this field.

We demonstrate the first application of mechanochemistry to conduct the synthesis of sulfonyl-(thio)ureas, including known anti-diabetic drugs tolbutamide, chlorpropamide and glibenclamide, in good to excellent isolated yields by either stoichiometric base-assisted or copper-catalysed coupling of sulfonamides and iso(thio)cyanates.

The synthesis of various amides has been realised avoiding the use of any organic solvent from activation of carboxylic acids with CDI to isolation of the amides. Mechanochemistry was the key point of the process allowing rapid formation of the amide bond and efficient water-based purification of the final products.

Selectins are adhesion molecules that resist large tensile forces applied by hydrodynamic forces to leukocytes binding to vessel walls. In crystals, the liganded (high-affinity) and unliganded (low-affinity) conformations differ in orientation between their tandem lectin and EGF domains. I examine how tensile force exerted on a selectin-ligand complex in vivo could favor the more extended, high...