The last time Rebecca Braslau got a bad case of poison oak,
she found herself pondering the chemical structure of urushiol, the toxic oil
in poison oak and its relatives, poison ivy and poison sumac (all species of
Toxicodendron).
"I thought, I'm a chemist. I should be able to do
something about this," said Braslau, a professor of chemistry and
biochemistry at the University of California, Santa Cruz.