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Bioinorganic Chemistry: A Short Course, Second Edition, by Rosette M. Roat-Malone
Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

2 Biochemistry Fundamentals

2.1 Introduction,

Biochemistry concerns itself with the study of life at the molecular level. The
subject area encompasses a huge body of information that grows and changes
rapidly in the hands of thousands of capable teachers, researchers, and writers.
An introduction to the biochemistry topics of proteins, protein kinetics, nucleic
acids, and genetics will be presented in this chapter. In addition, a discussion
of genomics and proteomics introduces topics of current relevance. The last
section of the chapter discusses zinc - fi nger proteins, a topic that combines
information introduced in this chapter on proteins, protein analysis, DNA,
DNA binding, and cloning. Other important biochemical topic areas such as
bioenergetics, saccharides and polysaccharides, lipids and lipoproteins, mem-
brane compositions and dynamics, vitamins, hormones, biochemical pathways,
and many others are not covered here. Students are referred to biochemistry
texts^1 and, for the most up - to - date information, to the primary literature and
to the internet. For instance, you might try the instructional “ Biochemistry
Online ” website maintained by Dr. Henry Jakubowski at http://employees.
csbsju.edu/hjakubowski/classes/ch331/bcintro/default.html. Wikibooks main-
tains a free biochemistry text at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Biochemistry.
In introductory biochemistry, one becomes familiar with amino acids (aa)
and how they combine (polymerize) to become peptides and proteins. Proteins
fold into three - dimensional shapes and become enzymes, the catalysts of