At the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society, researchers reported that a protein that binds sugar groups on the outermost proteins of HIV, gumming up the virus's machinery for entering cells, does nearly as well against the SARS and Ebola viruses, showing promise as a broad-spectrum antiviral.

At the American Chemical Society fall meeting, bioengineers reported equipping photosynthetic algae with the metabolic machinery needed to make isobutanol, a potential alcohol biofuel, and tweaking a reluctant microbe to make large quantities of n-butanol, another commercially important chemical.