Author: Izaz Ul Islam
For decades, chemists and biochemists have been puzzled by a deceptively simple question: When does highly reactive oxygen — especially singlet oxygen — actually form in chemical reactions? Now, after nearly 60 years of research, scientists have finally pinned down the answer.
What’s the Big Deal About “Reactive Oxygen”?
Molecular oxygen (O₂) is well known as the gas we breathe. But not all oxygen is created equal. There’s a special form called singlet oxygen — a highly energetic and highly reactive variant that behaves very differently from ordinary oxygen. It’s been implicated in:
- Oxidative damage in biological cells
- Battery degradation
- Photochemical reactions
- Environmental chemistry
Yet tracking exactly when and how this reactive species appears in reactions remained an unresolved question — until now.
The Discovery: When Highly Reactive Oxygen Appears
According to recent reports summarizing the New Scientist article, researchers have identified precise conditions under which singlet oxygen shows up during chemical reactions. While the full research details and visualizations are behind a paywall, the public summaries emphasize two themes:
- Singlet oxygen emerges only under well-defined chemical pathways, rather than randomly in any oxygen-involving reaction.
- Understanding these pathways helps explain why singlet oxygen has both damaging and useful roles — from degrading battery components to causing oxidative stress in living cells.
This finding has wide implications because until now, singlet oxygen was something of a ghost in reactive chemistry: known to exist, known to be influential, but rarely observed under controlled conditions.
Why This Matters
Reactive oxygen species, like singlet oxygen, play dual roles in nature:
- At low concentrations, they can serve signaling functions in cells.
- At higher levels, they cause oxidative stress and damage to DNA, proteins and membranes — contributing to diseases and material breakdown.
Knowing when and how singlet oxygen is generated allows researchers to:
- Improve battery materials resistant to oxidative breakdown.
- Better understand cellular aging and stress processes.
- Design chemical systems that either harness or suppress reactive oxygen formation.
Looking Ahead
The resolution of this long-standing oxygen puzzle opens up exciting avenues in fields from materials science to biochemistry. As researchers continue to map out exactly how and when reactive oxygen species emerge, we’ll gain better control over both their beneficial uses and their harmful effects.
Stay tuned — this once-obscure corner of chemistry is now coming into sharp focus.
Nature DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09587-7
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