Biological research introduction

The World Wide Web has transformed the way in which we obtain and analyze published information on proteins. What only a few years ago would take days or weeks and require the use of expensive computer workstations can now be achieved in a few minutes or hours using personal computers, both PCs and Macintosh, connected to the internet. The Web contains hundreds of sites of Interest to molecular biologists, many of which are listed in Pedro s BioMolecular Research Tools (http // www.fmi.ch/biology/research tools.html). Many sites provide free access to databases that make it very easy to obtain information on structurally related proteins, the amino acid sequences of homologous proteins, relevant literature references, medical information and metabolic pathways. This development has opened up new opportunities for even non-specialists to view and manipulate a structure of interest or to carry out amino-acid sequence comparisons, and one can now rapidly obtain an overview of a particular area of molecular biology. We shall here describe some Web sites that are of interest from a structural point of view. Updated links to these sites can be found in the Introduction to Protein Structure Web site (http // WWW.ProteinStructure.com/). 

Since Harrison, in 1907, first microscopically observed neurite outgrowth from cultured frog neurons, many have experienced the powerful persuasion of direct visualization of cellular responses in culture. Standardization of media composition, introduction of antibiotics, and development of cryopreservation techniques and immortalized cell lines in the 1950s enabled routine application of cell culture in the biological research laboratory. Utilization of cell culture in toxicology soon followed with development of systems for monitoring chemically induced mammalian genotoxicity. 

Proteomics is a newly coined term that refers to the field of study of the proteome. The term was defined for the first time in 1994 as the PROTEin products of a genOME. Since its introduction, the term has found widespread acceptance across the breadth of biological research. A simple search of the Medline database circa October 2000 indicated an almost exponential increase in the number of published articles about proteomics (see Eigure 9.1) since 1995. 

Following the introductions of the cation exchange technique for separation of amino acids (Moore and Stein, 1951) and the development of the first automatic amino acid analyser (Spackman et al., 1958), amino-acid analysis became routine in clinical and biological research. 

In 1966, in an article in NUCLEONICS, with TerPogossian, I wrote, The most important radioactive tracer in biological research is reactor-produced Carbon- 14,but it has never been widely used in nuclear medicine. The introduction of Carbon-11, Nitrogen-13, Qxygen-15 and Fluorine-18 revolutionized the study of regional chemistry in the Uving human body. 

The introduction of ion-exchange chromatography to the determination of amino acid compositions ranks as one of the most significant landmarks in modern biochemistry. The foundation of our knowledge of protein structure and function rests on this technology, which in turn has fundamentally influenced all phases of biological research. The complete resolution... 

Osada, H. (2010) Introduction of new tools for chemical biology research on microbial metabolites. Biosci. Biotechnol. Biochem., 74, 1135-1140. 

We first discuss the challenges in the synthesis of GPIs and analyze the tools and strategies used to solve the specific problems. This is followed by a summary of the representative syntheses of structurally diverse GPI targets. A short analysis of the synthetic GPI-based tools for biological research serves as the introduction to the discussion on the current state of the art in the synthesis of GPI-anchored peptides and proteins. 

For mixture.s the picture is different. Unless the mixture is to be examined by MS/MS methods, usually it will be necessary to separate it into its individual components. This separation is most often done by gas or liquid chromatography. In the latter, small quantities of emerging mixture components dissolved in elution solvent would be laborious to deal with if each component had to be first isolated by evaporation of solvent before its introduction into the mass spectrometer. In such circumstances, the direct introduction, removal of solvent, and ionization provided by electrospray is a boon and puts LC/MS on a level with GC/MS for mixture analysis. Further, GC is normally concerned with volatile, relatively low-molecular-weight compounds and is of little or no use for the many polar, water soluble, high-molecular-mass substances such as the peptides, proteins, carbohydrates, nucleotides, and similar substances found in biological systems. LC/MS with an electrospray interface is frequently used in biochemical research and medical analysis. 

History. Detailed reviews of biological, chemical, and clinical research that led to the introduction of oral contraceptives are available in the scientific and medical literature (8,9). 

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