Crystal engineering biological chemistry

Finally, mastering secondary noncovalent interactions is important not only for supramolecular chemistry and crystal engineering, but controlling these forces is fundamental in the context of an understanding of complex biological processes, particularly the principles and mechanisms of molecular recognition [1-3],... 

The topic of polymorphism is of tremendous and increasing academic and industrial importance in modern crystal chemistry and crystal engineering. The industrial interest stems from the pharmaceutical industry and has stimulated wide-ranging academic study. Legally, a molecule (termed an active pharmaceutical Ingredient, API) with particular biological activity in vivo can be patented as a new invention. Moreover, particular crystal forms of that molecule (polymorphs) can be separately patented as distinct inventions. If particular polymorphs are patented after the original API patent then upon the... 

Most of the recent literature in this field is concerned with synthetic organic reactions, supramolecular chemistry and crystal engineering. However, solvent free approaches can also be used in the extraction of natural products, although less information is available in the mainstream literature. Juice extractors can be used to afford aqueous solutions of biologically active compounds from undried plant material. An extract of Capsicum annum L. was recently prepared in this way, and then used in the green synthesis of silver nanoparticles. The actual synthesis of the nanoparticles was conducted in the aqueous phase and therefore this work will not be discussed further here. However, this solvent free approach to extraction is probably worthy of greater representation in the green chemistry literature. 

Due to their special chemical and physical properties (especially in elemental form), the PGM find various applications both in industry and in the laboratory, including organometallic chemistry, coordination and supramolecular chemistry, biological and medicinal chemistry, surfaces-, materials-and crystal engineering, photo- and electrochemistry and catalysis and organic synthesis. Today, the most important applications are, of course, their use in the catalytic automobile exhaust gas converter (e.g. Shelef and McCabe 2000), followed by their use in the jewelry industry. 

Owing to all these possibilities the NMR techniques have been used in many aspects of snpramolecular chemistry from biological (protein, polypeptide, etc.) to polymer systems and also in the crystal engineering field. However, besides the advantages, it is worth citing some drawback related, for instance, to the relatively low sensitivity in comparison to other techniques. This leads to... 

This chapter does not cover the use of metal ions as allosteric effectors (3), skeletal components (4) (see Crystal Engineering, Supramolecular Materials Chemistry), or sensing elements (5) (see Molecular Redox Sensors, Colorimetric Sensors and Luminescent Sensing, Supramolecular Devices). It also does not address the interaction of metal complexes with biological systems (see Synthetic Peptide-Based Receptors, Biological Small Molecules as Receptors, Molecular Recognition and Supramolecular Bioinorganic Chemistry, Supramolecular Aspects... 

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