Juan Bertrán - Böcker

People who attended the NATO Advanced Study Institute (ASI) entitled NEW THEORETICAL CONCEPTS FOR UNDERSTANDING ORGANIC REAC­ TIONS held at Sant Feliu de Gufxols on the Costa Brava of Spain had a unique experience. They have seen the evolution of the field from qualitative arguments through the generation of Potential Energy Surfaces (PES) to the use of PES in molecular dynamics. The excellent lectures that were dedicated to the various aspects of Potential Energy Surfaces clearly revealed a colossal amount of ma­ terial that represents our current understanding of the overall problem. It is our hope that the present volume will recreate the excitement in the readers that we all experienced during the meeting in Spain. One can say, without too much exaggeration, that chemistry has become and exercise on potential energy surfaces (PES). Structural (position of the energy minima), spectroscopic (vicinity around the minima), and reactivity (reaction path along the surface) properties may be determined from the analysis of PES. New theoretical tools, together with recent developments in computer technology and programming, have allowed to obtain a better knowledge of these surfaces, and to extract further chemical information from them, so new horizons have been added to Theoretical Organic Chemistry.

This work presents an up-to-date view of theories, practical methods and applications of solvent effects and chemical reactivity in condensed phases. Subjects treated include continuum solvation models, the theoretical basis for the treatment of solvent effects in density functional theory, Monte Carlo simulations of chemical reactions in solution, DFT molecular dynamics simulations, crossing the transition state in solution, valence bond multi-state approach to chemical reactions in solution, quantum theory of solvent effects and chemical reactions. The approaches taken as well as the resulting findings are discussed in detail, thus covering a large part of the methodology currently used in this field. This volume should be useful to graduate students in chemistry, physical chemistry and biochemistry, to research workers with a background in quantum chemistry and quantum mechanics, to pure and applied quantum chemists, and to industrial molecular modellers.

This book gathers original contributions from a selected group of distinguished researchers that are actively working in the theory and practical applications of solvent effects and chemical reactions. The importance of getting a good understanding of surrounding media effects on chemical reacting system is difficult to overestimate. Applications go from condensed phase chemistry, biochemical reactions in vitro to biological systems in vivo. Catalysis is a phenomenon produced by a particular system interacting with the reacting subsystem. The result may be an increment of the chemical rate or sometimes a decreased one. At the bottom, catalytic sources can be characterized as a special kind of surrounding medium effect. The materials involving in catalysis may range from inorganic components as in zeolites, homogenous components, enzymes, catalytic antibodies, and ceramic materials. . With the enormous progress achieved by computing technology, an increasing number of models and phenomenological approaches are being used to describe the effects of a given surrounding medium on the electronic properties of selected subsystem. A number of quantum chemical methods and programs, currently applied to calculate in vacuum systems, have been supplemented with a variety of model representations. With the increasing number of methodologies applied to this important field, it is becoming more and more difficult for non-specialist to cope with theoretical developments and extended applications. For this and other reasons, it is was deemed timely to produce a book where methodology and applications were analyzed and reviewed by leading experts in the field.

Although biotechnology emerged from the genetic engineering revolution of the '70s, the knowledge of the structure of genes revealed its molecular aspects. Molecular biotechnology is a multidisciplinary domain of research in which experiments, simulations, and theories interact. At present, the huge increase in computer power allows us to carry out numerical simulations of biochemical systems. However, a fundamental question appears concerning the sophistication of the model utilized to capture the main features of biomolecules and biochemical processes. In the present book a group of leading specialists in molecular biotechnology provides an answer to this question. This book is thus an excellent tool for those researchers wishing to know the state-of-the-art in this domain. The book spans the range from molecular conformations through protein folding, and from chemical reactivity through enzymatic action. Furthermore, it formulates recommendations for future research in molecular biotechnology.