Catalytic Applications

**3**

**Chapter 1**

Techniques

**1. Introduction**

*Mohammed Awad Ali Khalid*

cited with appropriate reference for more details.

The most adequate and proper techniques that are used in this category are differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC),

**2. Thermal techniques**

Introductory Chapter: The

Diversity of Biophysical Chemistry

Biophysical chemistry is an interdisciplinary field of study that uses concepts of chemistry and physics to understand biological systems by describing the quantitative, qualitative, energetics, structure, functions, and interactions phenomena of its physical nature. Because of the complexities of biological systems, a wide range of classical and sophisticated techniques have been employed in the field of biophysical chemistry; therefore mathematical, physical, and chemical techniques all flow into a single stream to describe biological systems. As an interesting field of research, biophysical chemistry is now growing up rapidly with major breakthroughs everywhere. In fact in 2009 Nobel Prize in chemistry have been awarded to three biophysical chemists for their work in X-ray diffraction of ribosomes [1]. The most important areas that attract biophysical chemists are molecular structure, molecular function, molecular dynamics, and kinetics, interactions, and thermodynamics of macromolecules that are located in the cell membrane or cytoplasmic constituents. In general biophysical chemistry interests in answering the following questions: how does a biological process take place, what types of molecules or particles are involved in this process and what are their structures, how long does it take for a biological process to take place and what are the energetics that accompany that change, what are the functions of biological molecules, and what are the consequences upon the cell if some biological molecules work disfunctionally? In this introductory chapter, we would like to shed light into the importance of biophysical chemistry as a growing field of science and the broad diversity of techniques that have been used to elucidate the related phenomena. These techniques are of spectroscopic, electrochemical, thermal, and physiological origins, and we will not be able to cover all of these techniques in such an introductory chapter. Instead we will describe some selected techniques for studying the structure and functions of biological molecules. Some of these techniques adopt environmental and semi-environmental conditions as that for biological molecules in its native environment. We will focus on four types of techniques that up to this date are used in biophysical chemistry field. Each technique comes with a short description and is

## **Chapter 1**
