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In this monograph, the importance of fluctuations forbiological reactions is discussed from various points of view. Understandingthe biological reactions at the molecular level is one of the major targets inmany scientific fields, including not only basic biology but also physics,physical chemistry, and medical science. One of the key factors in the processis "fluctuation". Thermal energy causes biological molecules to be in constantfluctuation even while they are carrying out their biological functions. How dobiological systems overcome the thermal fluctuations to realize thephysiologically relevant reactions? Scientists in a number of fields-physics,chemistry, pharmacology, medicine, and others-have contributed chapters thatelucidate the nature of the fluctuations and the relationship betweenfluctuations and biological functions. The fluctuations discussed in this volumeare detected by the transient grating method, nuclear magnetic resonance, X-raydiffraction and scattering, and computer simulation, among other methods. Thebook presents various results of the studies of fluctuations in biologicalprocesses that were obtained with these methods by the leading scientists intheir fields.
List of contents
Time-resolved detection of protein fluctuations during reactions.- Pressure perturbation: A prime tool to study conformational substates and volume fluctuations of biomolecular assemblies.- Watching a signaling protein function in real time via picosecond time-resolved Laue crystallography.- NMR explorations of biomolecular systems with rapid conformational exchanges.- Site-specific incorporation of fluorescent nonnatural amino acids in-to proteins and its application to fluorescence analysis of proteins.- Unfoldomes and unfoldomics: introducing intrinsically disordered proteins.- Structure, dynamics and function of staphylococcal nuclease.- Theory of molecular recognition and structural fluctuation of biomolecules.- Structural fluctuations of proteins in folding and ligand docking studied by replica-exchange simulations.- Spatio-temporal fluctuations of protein folding in living cells.- Membrane-targeted nanotherapy with hybrid liposomes for cancer cells leading to apoptosis.- Anti-tumor complexes formed by oleic acid and molten globule intermediates of proteins.
Summary
In this monograph, the importance of fluctuations for
biological reactions is discussed from various points of view. Understanding
the biological reactions at the molecular level is one of the major targets in
many scientific fields, including not only basic biology but also physics,
physical chemistry, and medical science. One of the key factors in the process
is “fluctuation”. Thermal energy causes biological molecules to be in constant
fluctuation even while they are carrying out their biological functions. How do
biological systems overcome the thermal fluctuations to realize the
physiologically relevant reactions? Scientists in a number of fields—physics,
chemistry, pharmacology, medicine, and others—have contributed chapters that
elucidate the nature of the fluctuations and the relationship between
fluctuations and biological functions. The fluctuations discussed in this volume
are detected by the transient grating method, nuclear magnetic resonance, X-ray
diffraction and scattering, and computer simulation, among other methods. The
book presents various results of the studies of fluctuations in biological
processes that were obtained with these methods by the leading scientists in
their fields.
