In the long human effort to reshape matter into medicine, chemists have always faced the tension between precision and brute force — the need to transform molecules without destroying what makes them useful. A team at Ritsumeikan University has found a gentler path, borrowing a principle from living organisms to use chlorine as a molecular scalpel, cutting and fusing chemical bonds at room temperature to convert one class of compounds into another with remarkable efficiency. Their 'cut-to-fuse' strategy, published in JACS Au in July 2026, represents not merely a technical advance but a philoso