Current Organic Chemistry - Volume 10, Issue 4, 2006

When single DNA molecules are stretched, the measurement of the resulting force as a function of extension has yielded new information about the physical, chemical, and biological properties of these important molecules. It has been shown that double-stranded DNA molecules undergo a force-induced melting transition at high forces. Forceextension measurements of single DNA molecules using optical tweezers allow us t Read More

In spite of the controversy regarding sugar and amino acid mirror-image symmetry and nature, it has been demonstrated that an intrinsic preference for left-handedness or right-handedness would depend on weak energy responsible for stabilising L-amino acids. A weak neutral current interaction involves an enantiomeric energy difference for L-amino acids to have sufficient magnitude to break open, non-equilibrium, r Read More

Iron (III) chloride is extensively used in organic synthesis as an ideal Lewis acid since it is an inexpensive, efficient, stable, environmentally friendly and a convenient agent for several useful reactions such as; polymerisations, oxidations, oxidative couplings, reductions, C C bond formation, Ferrier rearrangement, one-pot multicomponent condensations, Friedel-Crafts reactions, cyclisations, glycosidation, Prins-type cyclisatio Read More

Spectroscopic probes may be defined as the molecules that can react with analytes (targets) accompanying the changes of their spectroscopic (chromogenic, fluorescent, or chemiluminescent) properties; based on such changes the targets can thus be determined. Spectroscopic probes have been extensively investigated and used widely in many fields because of their powerful ability to improve analytical sensitivity and t Read More

Fluorescent oligonucleotides (FONs) are used in a wide variety of areas such as molecular and mechanistics biological studies, molecular diagnostics, therapeutic development, biotechnology and nanotechnology. Ever since the post-genome era, there has been an ever-increasing demand for more rapid and accurate nucleic acid detection and quantification methods. Genetic information analyses require highly sen Read More