The Hopkins Lecturer is given the charge of explaining how advances in other fields of science have had an impact on his or her own field of biochemistry. A moment’s thought revealed that it was not at all difficult to think of examples where other scientific fields have provided necessary groundwork for the study of RNA catalysis or RNA biochemistry in general. Rather, it was difficult to choo...

The 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel for their pioneering work on computer modelling, specifically, the 'development of multiscale models of complex chemical systems' (1). This award not only recognises the critical contributions by the three laureates to the field of molecular simulations, but also underscores the broad impact that computer...

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The encapsulation of proteins and nucleic acids within the nanoscale water core of reverse micelles has been used for over 3 decades as a vehicle for a wide range of investigations including enzymology, the physical chemistry of confined spaces, protein and nucleic acid structural biology, and drug development and delivery. Unfortunately, the static and dynamical aspects of the distribution of ...

The evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis and ensuing oxygenation of Earth's atmosphere represent a major transition in the history of life. Although many organisms retreated to anoxic environments, others evolved to use oxygen as a high-potential redox couple while concomitantly mitigating its toxicity. To understand the changes in biochemistry and enzymology that accompanied adaptation to O2, ...

Since its original publication, the DynaFit software package [Kuzmic, P. (1996). Program DYNAFIT for the analysis of enzyme kinetic data: Application to HIV proteinase. Anal. Biochem. 237, 260-273] has been used in more than 500 published studies. Most applications have been in biochemistry, especially in enzyme kinetics. This paper describes a number of recently added features and capabilities...

AIM To detect and assess the activity of extracellular hydrolytic enzymes and to find differences in enzymograms between fungi isolated from wheat and rye samples and grown on Czapek-Dox Broth and Sabouraud Dextrose Broth enriched with cereal (wheat or rye). Isolated strains were also classified in the scale of biosafety levels (BSL). MATERIAL AND METHODS The study used 23 strains of fungi cu...

lated bacteriophages f2 and MS2. Personal communications from W. Konigsberg and H. FraenkelConrat. 4Goldthwait, D. A., and G. R. Greenberg, in Methods in Enzymology, ed. S. P. Colowick and N. 0. Kaplan (New York: Academic Press, 1955), vol. 2, p. 516. 6 Rabinowitz, J. C., in The Enzymes, ed. P. D. Boyer, H. Lardy, and K. Myrback (New York: Academic Press, 1960), vol. 2, p. 185. 6lHuennekens, F....

A NEW FIELD in enzymology has emerged in the past decade with the discovery that RNA can act as an enzyme. First discovered in the cellular RNA-splicing and processing machinery in the form of self-splicing group 1 introns’ and precursor tRNA-processing RNase P (Ref. 2) RNA catalytic activity in a number of smaller RNAs has subsequently been identified3-5. The small, naturally occurring catalyt...

We evaluated a new analyzer that measures lactate in undiluted whole blood by direct (or undiluted) amperometry [Nova Stat Profile 7 Analyzer (SP7); Nova Biomedical, Waltham, MA] by comparing it with two other analyzers, one for measuring lactate in whole blood by indirect (or diluted) amperometry [Model 2300; Yellow Springs Instrument Co. (YSI), Yellow Springs, OH] and another for measuring la...