Fundamentals of Protein Structure and Function (Springer, 2007).pdf

Fundamentals of Protein

Structure and Function

Fundamentals of Protein

Structure and Function

Engelbert Buxbaum

Portsmouth, Dominica

Engelbert Buxbaum

Department of Biochemistry

Ross University School of Medicine

Box 266, Portsmouth Campus, Roseau

Commonwealth of Dominica (West Indies)

engelbert

buxbaum@web.de

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2005928847

ISBN-13: 978-0-387-26352-6

e ISBN-13: 978-0-387-68480-2

2007 Springer Science Business Media, LLC.

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Preface

... to describe the things that are, as they are.

(Friedrich II. (1164–1250): On the Art to Hunt with Birds)

In those simple words described Friedrich, emperor of the Holy Roman

Empire of German Nation, around 1240 the job of a scientist. He was an avid

hunter who particularly loved hunting with birds of prey. He realised that to

really enjoy that sport one had to know as much as possible about animals,

a knowledge that can be derived only by careful, unbiased observation. Thus

he broke with the antique tradition of mixing observation with philosophy,

religion and superstition, and wrote the ﬁrst truly scientiﬁc book in history.

Today science is all-pervading in our life. We live about twice as long as people

did in the days of Friedrich and our lives are much more comfortable, as a

result of scientiﬁc research and its technical application.

Proteins are the main actors in living organisms. While nucleic acids store the

information required to make functional proteins, proteins do almost all the

real work. So it is not surprising that after several years of emphasis in nucleic

acid biochemistry, culminating in the human genome project, attention is now

returning to proteins. Modern methods, in particular protein crystallography,

have conﬁrmed that “nature is greatest in the smallest things”. So apart

from it’s utility, which makes training in science a necessity, understanding

nature is, today just as much as in Friedrichs days, also a source of joy and

satisfaction. I wish every reader of this book a share in it.

How to read this book

I did not intend to write another biochemistry or cell biology text book, as

there are many on the market already (for example [48, 56]). Rather, I wanted

to focus on the fascinating world of proteins.

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