Culture of organic chemistry

Ursula Klein is senior research scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. She is author of Experiments, Models, Paper Tools Cultures of Organic Chemistry in the Nineteenth-Century (Stanford Stanford University Press, 2003), and (together with Wolfgang Lefevre) of Materials in Eighteenth-Century Science A Historical Ontology (Cambridge, MA MIT Press, 2007), as well as editor of Tools and Modes of Representation in the Laboratory Sciences (Dordrecht Kluwer, 2001). 

Klein, U., Lenoir, T., and Gumbrecht, H.U. 2003. Experiments, Models, Paper Tools Cultures of Organic Chemistry in the Nineteenth Century. Stanford Stanford University Press. 

Experiments, Models, Paper Tools Cultures of Organic Chemistry in the... 

PETR SOUDEK, SARKA VALENOVA, DAGMAR BENESOVA AND TOMAS VANEK Department of Plant Tissue Cultures, Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry, Czech Academy of Science, Flemingovo ndm. 2, 166 10 - Prague 6, Czech Republic... 

Deulofeu s reputation as a leading bio-organic chemist was already established, when, in 1939, he was appointed Professor of Organic Chemistry of the Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales of the same University. In 1941, invited by the Committee for Interamerican Cultural Relationships, he spent almost one year in the Biochemistry Laboratory, School of Medicine of the St. Louis University, doing research with Prof. E. A. Doisy. 

The authors thank Prof. R. Verpoorte of the division of Pharmacognosy, State University of Leiden, The Netherlands for his comments on the biosynthetical and cell culture sections and Prof JE. de Groot of the Laboratory of Organic Chemistry of Wageningen University, The Netherlands for his comments on the nomenclature of compounds. 

Several mono-carba-oligosaccharidic alpha amylase inhibitors, such as acarbose and its homologs, amylostatins, trestatins, oligostatins, adipo-sins, and so on, have been isolated from cultures of micro-organisms, and considerable interest in the biochemistry and chemistry of this class of inhibitors has been stimulated. The characteristic core-structure for inhibitory action is composed of a trihydroxy(hydroxymethyl)cyclohexene moiety and a 4-amino-4,6-dideoxy-D-glucopyranose moiety, bonded by way of an imino linkage at the allylic position. A similar structural unit has been found in the antibiotic validamycins. 

The discovery and exploitation of enzymes in aldoxime-nitrile pathway nitrile hydratase, amidase, nitrilase, aldoxime dehydratase, etc., are shown along with the use of methodologies, such as organic chemistry, microbial screening by enrichment and acclimation culture techniques, enzyme purification, gene cloning, molecular screening by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). 

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