Editorial [Hot Topic: Analytical Methods in Organic Chemistry (Guest Editors: Atta-ur-Rahman/Klaus-Peter Zeller )]

In this issue of Current Organic Chemistry new developments and applications of several analytical methods in life science, protein chemistry and natural product chemistry are documented. The article of Hirata and Fujii focuses on the direct detection of reactive oxygen radicals generated from xenobiotics, metal ions and drugs by in vivo detection with ESR spectroscopy and imaging. In their review, Griffith and Kaltashov provide a summary of numerous developments in mass spectrometry in the analysis of hemoglobins. Studies on all levels of protein structure and assembly, and interactions with other biomolecules are presented. Their clinical importance in the analysis of the hemoglobin mutations and posttranslational and chemical modifications is discussed. The article of Malliavin summarizes the methods published since 1997 for liquid-NMR of proteins. Methods for structure determination, spectral assignment and structure mobility are reviewed. The structural biology of antimicrobial peptides by solution and solid state NMR spectroscopy using phosphatylglycerol micelles as bacterial membrane-mimetic models is outlined by Wang. A picture is obtained regarding how antimicrobial peptides exert their perturbation activity on bacterial membranes. The relevance of the membrane-bound structures of these peptides to guide peptide engineering in order to improve the therapeutic effect is stressed. The applications of a wide range of separation techniques, spectroscopic and mass spectrometric methods for the determination of alkannins and shikonins are presented by Papageorgiou et al. As these natural products are susceptible for to several transformations, validated analytical methods are crucial for their use in pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. The editors thank all the authors for their efforts in preparing these interesting articles.