Chemical and structural biology

Jiang, H. L. Bai, D. L. Luo, X. M. Progress in clinic, pharmacological, chemical and structural biological studies of huperzine A a drug of traditional Chinese medicine origin for the treatment of Alzheimer s disease. Curr. Med. Chem., 2003, 10 2231-2252. 

I believe that this book is extremely informative for researchers who want to take advantage of the use of fluorine in biomedical research such as rational drug design, theory and synthesis, the use of fluorine labels for chemical and structural biology, metabolism and biodistribution studies, protein engineering, clinical diagnosis, etc. This book will serve as an excellent reference book for graduate students as well as scientists at all levels in both academic and industrial laboratories. 

The United States is the leader in biological chemistry, especially with regard to innovative research in the areas of chemical and structural biology, signaling pathways, nucleic acids, and functional genomics, and is among the leaders in biocatalysis and in vivo molecular imaging. 

In contrast, RNA occurs in multiple copies and various forms (Table 11.2). Cells contain up to eight times as much RNA as DNA. RNA has a number of important biological functions, and on this basis, RNA molecules are categorized into several major types messenger RNA, ribosomal RNA, and transfer RNA. Eukaryotic cells contain an additional type, small nuclear RNA (snRNA). With these basic definitions in mind, let s now briefly consider the chemical and structural nature of DNA and the various RNAs. Chapter 12 elaborates on methods to determine the primary structure of nucleic acids by sequencing methods and discusses the secondary and tertiary structures of DNA and RNA. Part rV, Information Transfer, includes a detailed treatment of the dynamic role of nucleic acids in the molecular biology of the cell. 

The relatively large surface area within micro-fluidic structures can be exploited in a proactive way to add chemical and or biological functionalisation to a process. A range of surface modification techniques have been developed and some of the more widely used techniques are outlined below. 

The purpose of this book is to introduce fibrous inorganic materials, their unique features, and their chemical and structural variety. This survey of fibrous materials, together with a summary of their health and biological effects, provides an opportunity to examine the current theories of disease induction and the hazards associated with exposure, not only to asbestos but to other inorganic fibers as well. 

In addition to their varied biological roles, non-heme iron proteins contain a magnificent assortment of iron sites having a multitude of chemical and structural properties. Indeed, the catalog of iron centers is a bit like the taxonomy of insects—a seemingly limitless variation of a few structural themes, yet each new form sufficiently different to define a new species. It is beyond the scope of any review of non-heme iron proteins to be inclusive, and there are excellent recent reviews which detail selected topics. Rather, it is our intention to provide in one chapter an overview of the major classes with an emphasis on proteins for which a crystal structure is available. This review begins with a survey of the types of protein iron structures and a discussion of some methods and problems associated with establishing the iron center type. This should provide an introduction to readers less familiar with the area. Sections II to IV include the current status and recent developments for a limited number of proteins from the major iron classes. These have been chosen in the subjective vein of a limited review the omission of a topic does not indicate its relative importance or interest, only the limitation of space. The purpose of this section is to emphasize the diversity of iron center structures and functions. 

Quantitative Structure Activity Relationship (QSAR) is a method that makes predictions by the quantitative description of molecular properties with the use of descriptors of the chemical structure (Dearden 2003). This means QSAR models describe the quantitative or calculated relationship between a chemical structure and their biological activity (e.g. toxicity) with the help of chemical descriptors that are generated from the molecular structure (Durham and Pearl 2001). This relationship is described in from of a mathematical equation (e.g. log 1/C = a tt + b a +. .. + const). QSAR models generally show better predictivity if all compounds of a dataset involved in the prediction are derived from a congeneric series of compounds, that means they should all act by the same mechanism of action, since the physico-chemical and structural descriptors used in the QSAR reflect the same mechanism of action. Sometimes it is difficult to determine the mechanism of action, so series of compounds involved in a QSAR model are often restricted to a given chemical class in the hope that this will ensure a single mechanism of action (Dearden 2003). 

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