Molecular biological techniques development

The first two volumes in the series New Comprehensive Biochemistry appeared in 1981. Volume 1 dealt with membrane structure and Volume 2 with membrane transport. The editors of the last volume (the present editor being one of them) tried to provide an overview of the state of the art of the research in that field. Most of the chapters dealt with kinetic approaches aiming to understand the mechanism of the various types of transport of ions and metabolites across biological membranes. Although these methods have not lost their significance, the development of molecular biological techniques and their application in this field has given to the area of membrane transport such a new dimension that the appearance of a volume in the series New Comprehensive Biochemistry devoted to molecular aspects of membrane proteins is warranted. 

It should be emphasized that all of these activities proceed simultaneously, and that increased emphasis and interest in any particular area is often preceded by the development of new techniques—for example, the tremendous increase in specificity and sensitivity of chemical methods has proceeded simultaneously with the introduction of molecular biologic techniques into studies of mechanisms of toxic action. 

The EMBL vector systems have been subjected to many modifications to enhance their usefulness. The most useful modifications involve the addition of more restriction enzyme recognition sites flanking the stuffer fragment and the addition of T3 and T7 RNA polymerase promoters. The T3 and T7 RNA polymerase promoters are used to synthesize 32P-labeled RNAs that can be used as probes for the identification of overlapping A clones. Many of the A vectors described above are available from or have been developed by commercial vendors. As in the case with many basic molecular biology techniques, the components needed to construct a specific recombinant phage library (A vector arms, in vitro packaging extracts, etc.) and even the library can be obtained from commercial sources. 

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