Virtual Issue: Structure Characterization of Biomolecules

The structural diversity of biomolecules is quite simply enormous. Although many polymeric biomolecules such as proteins, and ribonucleic (RNA) and deoxyribonucleic (DNA) acids have complex but rather well-defined lowest-energy structures, it became increasingly apparent in recent years that many of them have not. Especially for proteins, but also for RNA, it has been shown that they can instead feature a number of significantly different yet similarly stable structures, or even generally lack defined structure at all, which led to the idea that a static view of single, rigid structures may not be sufficient for understanding the properties and function of biomolecules. This fundamental insight into the dynamic nature of biomolecules, and its highly important implications in folding and binding, only became possible with the use of newly developed or refined experimental approaches. This virtual issue in ChemistryOpen on the “Structure Characterization of Biomolecules” highlights the fruitful interplay between chemical synthesis and advanced techniques for biomolecular characterization in solution and in the gas phase, among them, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, mass spectrometry (MS), ion mobility spectrometry (IMS), microscale thermophoresis (MST), and kinetic capillary electrophoresis (KCE).