Biochemistry and Biophysics
Biochemistry and Biophysics
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Biochemistry and biophysics have been grouped together in this section. Biochemistry is "the study of the chemistry of living organisms, especially the structure and function of their chemical components", while biophysics is "the study of physical aspects of biology" (Oxford Dictionary of Biology, 4th ed., 2000). Both are integral parts of biology, and their interdisciplinary relationship with basic biological sciences often blurs subject area lines. Frequently, the materials and literature for one discipline will satisfy the demands or questions posed by the other.
There will be substantial overlap, also, between biochemistry/biophysics with Molecular and Cellular Biology.
Abstracts and Indexes
- SPIN Database, part of Scitation. Melville, New York: American Institute of Physics.
A searchable database covering journals of the American Institute of Physics and several member and affiliated societies, except the American Physical Society. The SPIN database is updated regularly and covers nearly one million research records in the physical sciences from 1975 to the present. Available via SPIN Web, an online journal publishing service of AIP, this service also provides advance SPIN abstracts and links to Physical Review Abstracts.
Associations
- American Chemical Society (ACS).
Founded 1876, 151,000 members. Scientific and educational society of chemists and chemical engineers. Computerized services include the database, Chemical Journals of the ACS Online which contains full text of 23 ACS journals and online services CAS (Chemical Abstract Service Online, an interactive chemical information search service, and STN International, a scientific and technical information network. Publishes 23 journals including Analytical Chemistry, Biochemistry, Chemical Abstracts, Chemical and Engineering News, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, Journal of Chemical Education, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Journal of Physical and Chemical Reference Data, etc. The ACS Web site is a major source of information for chemists.
- American Institute of Chemists (AIC).
Founded 1923, 4,000 members. Chemists and chemical engineers. Promotes advancement of chemical professions in the U.S.; protects public welfare by establishing and enforcing high practice standards; represents professional interests of chemists and chemical engineers. Publishes annual Professional Directory and The Chemist. The Web site is primarily for membership information.
- American Institute of Physics (AIP).
Founded 1931. Ten national member societies, including 100,000 members in the fields of physics, astronomy and related disciplines. Seeks to assist in the advancement and diffusion of the knowledge of physics and its application to human welfare. Publishes several scientific journals. Web site contains extensive information for physicists.
- American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB).
Founded 1906, 9,300 members. Biochemists and molecular biologists who have conducted and published original investigations in biological chemistry and/or molecular biology. Publishes Journal of Biological Chemistry. Formerly American Society of Biological Chemists. Web site primarily for society information.
- Biochemical Society (BS).
Founded 1911. 9,000 members. Objectives are to promote biochemistry and to provide a forum for information exchange and discussion of various aspects of teaching and research in biochemistry. Publishes Biochemical Journal, Biochemical Society Transactions, Essays in Biochemistry, etc. Web site contains membership information, some links of interest to biochemists.
- Biophysical Society (BPS).
Founded 1957. 5,600 members. Biophysicists, physical biochemists, and physical and biological scientists interested in the application of physical laws and techniques to the analysis of biological or living phenomena. Publishes Annual Meeting Abstracts Journal, Biophysical Journal, Biophysical Society Directory, and Biophysical Society Newsletter. Web site provides career information, membership information, and a buyer's guide.
- Biophysical Society of Canada (BSC).
Founded 1985. 80 members. Biophysicists and other scientists working in related fields. Promotes biophysical research and education; gathers and disseminates information among members and other scientific organizations. Publishes newsletter, directory. Web site provides membership information, access to newsletter, and links to other biophysical associations.
- Canadian Society for Chemistry (CSC), now part of the Chemical Institute of Canada.
Founded 1985, 3,500 members. Scientific association of chemists in education, government, and industry. Covers chemical research, development, management, and education. Publishes Canadian Chemical News. Web site primarily for society information, but has links to other chemical resources.
- Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS).
Founded 1964. 39,000 members. Purpose is to further re-search and education in the field of biochemistry and to disseminate research findings. Publishes European Journal of Biochemistry and FEBS Letters. Web site primarily for society information.
- International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB).
Founded 1955. 65 members. National academies, research councils, or biochemical societies; associated bodies represent national biochemical and molecular biology societies; special members are organizations representing industrial and other groups. Publishes Biochemical Education, Biochemical Nomenclature and Related Documents, BioFactors, Journal of Biotechnology and Applied Biochemistry, and Trends in Biochemical Sciences. Web site primarily for society information.
- International Union of Pure and Applied Biophysics (IUPAB).
Founded 1966. National committees appointed by academies and research councils representing 50 countries. Purposes are to organize international cooperation in biophysics and to promote communication between the various branches of biophysics and allied subjects; to encour-age cooperation between the societies that represent the interests of biophysics; to contribute to the advancement of biophysics. Publishes Quarterly Reviews of Biophysics and IUPAB News. Web site primarily for members.
- Pan-American Association of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (PABMB).
Founded 1969, 12 members. Societies of professional biochemists in the Americas and culturally-related European Countries. Promotes the sciences of biochemistry by disseminating information and encouraging contacts between its members. Publishes Symposium Proceedings. Formerly: Pan American Association of Biochemical Societies. Web site primarily for members.
- Protein Society.
Founded 1986. To promote international interactions among investigators in order to explore all aspects of the "building blocks of life: protein molecules." Membership is open to scholars and researchers interested in the analysis, chemistry, folding, structure, function, and regulation of proteins. Publishes Protein Science. Web site provides membership information and a nice list of "Resources for Protein Scientists".
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Dictionaries and Encyclopedias
- Compendium of Chemical Terminology: IUPAC Recommendations. 2nd ed. Alan D. McNaught and Andrew Wilkinson, eds. (IUPAC Chemical Nomenclature Series). Oxford: Blackwell, 1997. $49.50 (paper). ISBN 0865426848 (paper).
Commonly referred to as the "Gold Book." Alphabetical listing of nearly 7,000 terms recommended by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry with authoritative definitions, spanning the whole range of chemistry. The online version: IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, corresponds to the second printed edition and includes a few minor corrections.
- IUBMB Recommendations on Biochemical & Organic Nomenclature, Symbols & Terminology etc. International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
This Web site provides links to numerous IUBMB and IUPAC recommendations on biochemical terminology, including enzymes, nucleic acids, steroids, vitamins, and other chemicals.
Directories
- ACS Directory of Graduate Research. Washington, DC: American Chemical Society, 1999. $70.00. ISSN 0193-5011.
The most comprehensive source of information on chemical research and researchers at universities in the United States and Canada. It lists faculties, academic research, publications, Doctoral and Master's theses in departments or divisions of chemistry, chemical engineering, biochemistry, medical/pharmaceutical chemistry, clinical chemistry, polymer science, food science, and environmental science. It contains information on degrees offered, areas of specialization, interdisciplinary programs, faculty biographical information, titles of papers published within the last two years. Also available as DGRWeb. DGRWeb contains all the information in the ACS Directory of Graduate Research and is easily searchable online.
- Chemcyclopedia. v. 1- , 1983- . Washington, DC: American Chemical Society. Annual. ISSN 0736-6019.
Available in print as an annual supplement to Chemical and Engineering News, the complete guide is accessible on the Web. This online guide provides detailed information about chemical products and companies. It is searchable by chemical name, CAS registry number, and category. (Update: This resource is no longer available online.)
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Guides to Internet Resources
- The American Institute of Physics (AIP) is the largest organization of physicists in North America, located at College Park, MD. Their home page is relevant because of its huge amount of valuable information for the physical sciences per se and for access to sources on the Internet such as details about AIP and its member societies, public information, meetings and conferences, online journal publishing service, AIP journals, Physics Today, magazines, books, proceedings, publishing services, education and student services, science policy, its history center, and working at AIP.
- The American Chemical Society (ACS), Washington, DC, is an organization of over 150,000 members which provides similar services for the chemical sciences at its home page including services of interest to chemists, information about educational scholarships and grants, awards administered by ACS, ACS Library, various member benefits, meetings, ACS periodicals, career services, etc. Various databases are searchable (CAS, patents, abstracts, LabGuide Online, Chemcylopedia Online).
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- Other chemistry websites:
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- BMRB BioMagResBank. Dept. of Biochemistry, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
A repository for data from NMR spectroscopy (an indispensable part of the biochemists toolkit) on proteins, peptides, and nucleic acids. The July 31, 1995 release of the database contains over 94,000 unique chemical shifts including more than 6,000 13C shifts and 4,000 15N shifts. Topics covered are biological macromolecules, NMR spectral parameters, kinetics, thermodynamics, and structure. The present form of the database is described in the publication "A Relational Database for Sequence-Specific Protein NMR Data" by B. R. Seavey, et al, in Journal of Biomolecular NMR1: 217-236, 1991. Work is in progress to enlarge the scope of the database.
- Chembytes Infozone.
Provides information from the ACS and the Royal Society of Chemistry on projects, online chemical magazine, access to some journals and major reference publications, news, products, the online version of the IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Technology, patents, funding opportunities, library and information sources from the Royal Society library, etc.
- Chemfinder. Cambridge, MA: CambridgeSoft.
This Web site provides free information and access to National Cancer Institute databases, reference services, reagents, subscriptions, software, lab equipment, etc. It can be described as a "virtual handbook."
- Chemical Industry Search Engine.
A worldwide search engine of the chemical industry which provides access to industry centers, equipment and software, chemical resources, news, organizations, services, career and community information, chemical technology, events, academic institutions.
- Chemical Information Page. Bethesda, MD: National Library of Medicine.
Provides information on drugs, pesticides, environmental pollution, and other potential toxins. This specialized information service maintains a site for access to the structures of chemical substances, searchable by chemical structure and identifier. SIS provides a primary chemical dictionary (ChemIDplus) which is accessible free via Internet Grateful Med (IGM).
- Linstrom, Peter J. and W. G. Mallard. NIST Chemistry WebBook. Washington, DC: National Institute of Standards and Technology. NIST Standard Reference Database Number 69, February 2000 Release.
Provides access to thermochemical, thermophysical, and ion energetics data, compiled by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Search options include: formula, name, CAS registry number, author, structure, physical properties, special data sets, 3-D structures, citation guide, and species list (a list of all of the chemical species). The documentation is authoritative. The chemistry that you need all in one place.
- Wiggins, Gary. Cheminfo: Chemical Information Sources from Indiana University. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University.
This is a guide to chemical literature and information sources on the Web and elsewhere.
- Winter, Mark. Chemdex. Sheffield, UK: University of Sheffield.
Chemdex has been on the Web since 1993, maintaining a directory of chemical sites on the Internet. It is possible to search on chemistry, universities and other institutions, government organizations, companies, communication sources, databases, societies, software, etc.
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Handbooks
Rather than duplicate the discussion on computer-based and electronic databases that appears in Molecular and Cellular Biology, refer to the fully annotated "Databases" section. There is a great deal of overlap that occurs between biochemistry and other biological disciplines. For example, databanks for protein and enzyme sequences are annotated in the Molecular and Cellular Biology, and gene sequence databases are discussed in the Genetics.
- Hardy, James K. Hazardous Chemical Database. Akron, OH: University of Akron, 1996- .
Another database of interest in this area is the one compiled by Dr. Hardy and his research group at the University of Akron). This collection provides information for 2,662 hazardous chemicals; keywords include names, formula and registry numbers. Also, consult Lewis's printed desk reference and the Hazardous Substances Data Bank, below.
- Hazardous Substances Data Bank (HSDB). Bethedsda, MD: National Library of Medicine.
This data bank covers the broad scope of hazardous substances for human and animal toxicity, safety and handling, environmental fate, etc. It is scientifically peer-reviewed. Also accessible via the Chemical Information Page.
- Indiana University Molecular Structure Center. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Department of Chemistry.
This home page provides links to information about the Center, molecular structures, and crystallographic links. It is possible to download x-ray crystallographic data on the structure of organic and inorganic molecules and even find 3D models of almost 300 molecules in a section titled "Common Molecule Pages."
Histories
- The American Institute of Physics maintains "The Center for History of Physics" for information about the history of physics in relation to education, exhibits, the library, visual archives, oral histories, publications, and grants.
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