The development of bioorganic chemistry in the U.S.S.R. during the last decade.

Abstract

Abrief review has been made of selected work in bioorganic chemistry carried out in the Soviet Union in the past decade. Most consideration has been given to the chemistry of peptide and protein substances, including structural, synthetic, stereochemical and structure—functional studies. The most importantresults have been touched upon, obtained from chemical study of nucleic acids, carbohydrates and mixed biopolymers and also of bioregulators (enzymes, hormones, antibiotics, etc). Special attention has been paid to the structure of biological membranes and the physical chemistry of their functioning, in particular, to studies of transmembrane ion transport. Beginning with the middle of this century progress in the natural sciences has become closely identified with our deepening knowledge of the physicochemical basis of life. The outstanding achievements marking progress in the solution of this greatest of Nature's enigmas have been the direct result of the ingraining into biology of the concepts and methods of chemistry and physics. As the result of this development we are now, in this area, thinking on a molecular level. The chemistry of natural products has also not escaped fundamental changes particularly in the last decade. First and foremost, this field has become intimately linked with the study of biological function, a union which has rapidly transformed the classical, largely descriptive natural product chemistry into modern bioorganic chemistry, a major branch in the vigorously developing complex of sciences that have given contemporary biology its physicochemical footing. It is only natural that bioorganic chemistry has developed hand in hand with advances in biochemistry and biophysics and that many of the most important types of compounds, biochemical processes and biological phenomena are simultaneously the subject of these three closely allied sciences. In the course of the transition into modern bioorganic chemistry, not only the objectives, but the objects themselves and the methods of their study have undergone fundamental change. Primary attention is now being given to those biopolymers (proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, carbohydrates), whose conversions comprise the chemical essence of vital activity, and to those bioregulators (enzymes, hormones, antibiotics, etc.) which induce these conversions or effect