Editorial [Hot Topic: Bioorganic Chemistry (Guest Editor: Harri Lonnberg) ]

This issue constitutes Part II of the first thematic issue of Bioorganic Chemistry published in Current Organic Chemistry. It contains three timely reviews that highlight three important subjects. Prof Toth with his co-workers describes the recent developments in synthetic chemistry of phosphopeptides. Proteomics of phosphoproteome is one of the most actively investigated fields of systems biology. Protein phosphorylation is a widely occurring post-translational modification that forms the chemical basis for intracellular signal transduction. Development of high throughput methods for analysis of phosphoproteome depends on availability of phosphopeptides and, hence, efficient and convenient methods of phosphopeptide synthesis are of utmost importance. Synthesis of structurally modified nucleosides is a field of equal importance. Nucleoside analogs have found applications as antiviral and anticancer drugs, as constituents structurally modified antisense oligonucleotides and as nucleoside triphosphate analogs in enzymatic sequencing of nucleic acids. In the second article, Prof Seela and his co-workers summarize in considerable depth the recent advances in the synthesis of nucleoside analogs derived from 7-deazapurine, i.e. pyrrolo[2,3-d]pyrimidine. In addition, the potential of 7-deazapurine nucleosides as antiviral or anticancer drugs, as well as the use of their triphosphates in Sanger´s dideoxynucleoside DNA-sequencing, are elucidated. Finally, the contribution of Prof Komiyama and his co-workers gives a fascinating example of the possibilities of man-made oligonucleotide conjugates as artificial nucleases. Systematic long-term research efforts have produced a methodology that enable in vitro tailoring of large DNA molecules in a pre-design manner. These studies are surveyed. I thank all the contributors for their thorough work that will benefit many organic chemists, not only those working on related subjects, but also a wider readership being interested in general progress of chemical biology