Applications biological systems, analysis

Bioanalysis may be defined as laboratory analysis of biomolecules. Biomolecules, in turn, are organic compounds with biological activity, generally important only in biological systems, or cells. Biochemistry is the study of structure and function of biomolecules. Biotechnology, a related concept, concerns the industrial applications of biochemical techniques. Thus bioanalysis, biochemistry, and biotechnology are closely related concepts, all concerned primarily with biomolecules. 

Nonetheless, the topological and stoichiometric analysis of metabolic networks is probably the most powerful computational approach to large-scale metabolic networks that is currently available. Stoichiometric analysis draws upon extensive work on the structure of complex reaction systems in physical chemistry in the 1970s and 1980s [59], and can be considered as one of the few theoretically mature areas of Systems Biology. While the variety and amount of applications of stoichiometric analysis prohibit any comprehensive summary, we briefly address some essential aspects in the following. 

J. W. Blackburn. 1989. Improved understanding and application of hazardous waste biological treatment processes using microbial systems analysis techniques. Hazard. Waste Hazard. Mat. 6(2) 173-193. 

The first two sections of Chapter 5 give a practical introduction to dynamic models and their numerical solution. In addition to some classical methods, an efficient procedure is presented for solving systems of stiff differential equations frequently encountered in chemistry and biology. Sensitivity analysis of dynamic models and their reduction based on quasy-steady-state approximation are discussed. The second central problem of this chapter is estimating parameters in ordinary differential equations. An efficient short-cut method designed specifically for PC s is presented and applied to parameter estimation, numerical deconvolution and input determination. Application examples concern enzyme kinetics and pharmacokinetic compartmental modelling. 

If the application is for a biological system, wherein the objective is to isolate or quantitate a specific drug and its metabolite which is known, then the chemist can proceed to work with the compounds directly. In most cases, however, the chemist must be prepared to resolve the unexpected compound, which is not all that difficult, depending on the equipment available. The possibility that a thermal environment, such as GC, can initiate a reaction involving a labile drug or metabolite can be distressing, to say the least. Sample preparation usually includes some isolation technique which restricts classes of compounds. The need for sample cleanup will depend on the nature of the sample (see Section 12.3). The point here is that there will be some sample preparation as the first step in the analysis which will provide an initial "cleanup" of the sample. 

Application of F.t.-i.r. spectroscopy to biological systems and carbohydrate mixtures or dilute solutions is of particular interest, because of the ease of analysis of data by use of such techniques as absorption subtraction or factor analysis. This is possible owing to the direct interfacing of the computer to the spectrometer, which allows arithmetic manipulation of the spectra in an imaginative way, as will be seen in the following Section. 

We will focus our attention in this chapter on an overview of the thermodynamic analysis of metabolism and of the stabilities of two types of biomolecules, proteins and nucleic acids. Rather than provide a comprehensive account of thermodynamic applications to biological systems, we have chosen these two key areas where, historically, thermodynamic measurements have... 

Liu, R.H., Ward, M., Bonanno, J., Ganser, D., Athavale, M., Grodzinski, R, Plastic in-line chaotic micromixer for biological applications. Micro Total Analysis Systems, Proceedings 5th Lt7/l,S Symposium, Monterey, CA, Oct. 21-25, 2001, 163-164. 

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