Authored by leading experts in the enzymology of natural product biosynthesis, this completely revised and updated edition provides a description of the types of natural products, the biosynthetic pathways that enable the production of these molecules, and an update on the discovery of novel products in the post-genomic era. Although some 500 000 - 600 000 natural products have been isolated and characterized over the past two centuries, there may be a 10-fold greater inventory awaiting immediate exploration based on biosynthetic gene cluster predictions. The approach of this book is to codify the chemical logic that underlies each natural product structural class as they are assembled from building blocks of primary metabolism. This second edition integrates many new findings into the sets of principles of the first edition that parsed categories of natural product chemistries into the underlying enzymatic mechanisms and the catalytic machinery for building the varied and complex end product metabolites. New chapters include evaluation of a core set of thermodynamically activated but kinetically stable metabolites that power both primary and secondary metabolic pathways. Also, after decades of uncertainty about the existence of various pericyclase classes, a series of genome mining, heterologous expression, and enzymatic activity characterization have validated a plethora of pericyclases over the past decade. The several types of pericyclases are involved in biosynthetic complexity generation of almost every major category of natural products. This text will serve as a reference point for chemists of every subdiscipline, including synthetic organic chemists and medicinal chemists. It will also be valuable to bioinformatic and computational biologists, pharmacognocists and chemical ecologists, and bioengineers and synthetic biologists.

Building upon the previous volumes, The Chemical Biology of Sulfur, The Chemical Biology of Phosphorus, and The Chemical Biology of Nitrogen, this book examines the organic chemistry of life, The Chemical Biology of Carbon. It examines chemical biology open to carbon-containing natural metabolites that allow both retrospective and predictive behaviours of both biosynthetic and degradative metabolism in primary and secondary pathways. This book also notes the centrality of a core set of heterocycles in metabolites and coenzyme forms of vitamins and how that chemistry enables life. The organic chemical fundamental considerations are always tied to specific metabolites and metabolic transformations. This context makes this volume not a classical organic or even bioorganic approach to organic chemistry in vivo but instead a unique analysis of how the rules and reactivities of organic chemistry underlie the organic chemistry of life. The Chemical Biology of Carbon is an ideal reference and guide for medicinal chemists, chemical biologists, organic chemists as well as postgraduate, graduate and advanced undergraduate students in these areas and related disciplines.

From DNA and RNA to proteins and vitamins the role of nitrogen is central in organismal metabolism. The Chemical Biology of Nitrogen comprehensively examines how the chemistry available to both inorganic and organic nitrogen compounds both enable and conditions the vast array of nitrogen biologies. This book provides a chemocentric approach to both the inorganic and organic chemical biology of nitrogen. Following an introduction to nitrogen trivalency the book progresses through the logic of inorganic nitrogen metabolism and organic nitrogen metabolites to nitrogen proteomics with an integrative approach to understanding the role of nitrogen in its many biologic roles. Authored by a renowned scientist and educator, this book is ideal for researchers in chemical biology and nitrogen metabolism and will be of particular interest to advanced students and postgraduates in biochemistry and chemical biology.

Alexander Todd, the 1957 Nobel laureate in chemistry is credited with the statement: "where there is life, there is phosphorus". Phosphorus chemical biology underlies most of life's reactions and processes, from the covalent bonds that hold RNA and DNA together, to the making and spending 75 kg of ATP every day, required to run almost all metabolic and mechanical events in cells. Authored by a renowned biochemist, The Chemical Biology of Phosphorus provides an in-depth, unifying chemical approach to the logic and reactivity of inorganic phosphate and its three major derivatives (anhydrides, mono- and diesters) throughout biology to examine why life depends on phosphorus. Covering the breadth of phosphorus chemistry in biology, this book is ideal for biochemistry students, postgraduates and researchers interested in the chemical logic of phosphate metabolites, energy generation, biopolymer accumulation and phosphoproteomics.

As humans evolved from primordial organisms they lost the capacity to make certain essential molecules. By their very absence in specific pathologies and diseases, the thirteen human vitamins were discovered and their crucial role in metabolism revealed. This textbook provides a thorough chemocentric view on the key small molecules of life, the human vitamins and their active coenzyme forms. Detailing how their unique chemistries control the interconversion and the flux of hundreds of central human metabolites, The Chemical Biology of Human Vitamins examines the parallel and convergent tracks of the vitamins and their coenzyme forms. Analysing the mode of action of each of the vitamins, the book will illuminate the challenges that face each cell; metabolism could not proceed without the chemical functional groups vitamins provide. Authored by leading educators, this text will serve as an ideal guide and reference point for chemists in both academia and industry, graduates and advanced undergraduate students in biochemistry, chemical biology, metabolism and metabolomics.

This volume aims to provide an in-depth view of the complete biochemistry of sulfur with an emphasis on aspects not covered elsewhere. Given its role in the formation of proteins and presence in the amino acids methionine and cysteine, sulfur is essential to life. Current literature on the biochemistry of sulfur is vast and widely dispersed, as such this volume is intended as a single-source for everything concerning sulfur biochemistry from metabolic roles of inorganic sulfur, to thiol and thioether chemical biology, to the university of cysteine chemistry in proteomes. Authored by a renowned biochemist and experienced writer and educator, this book is ideal for students and researchers in biochemistry, biology and the life sciences with an interest in sulfur and its role in life.

Authored by leading experts in the enzymology of natural product biosynthesis, this textbook provides a thorough description of the types of natural products, the biosynthetic pathways that enable the production of these molecules, and an update on the discovery of novel products in the post-genomic era. Although some 500-600,000 natural products have been isolated and characterized over the past two centuries, there may be a 10-fold greater inventory awaiting immediate exploration based on biosynthetic gene cluster predictions. The approach of this book is to codify the chemical logic that underlies each natural product structural class as they are assembled from building blocks of primary metabolism. This text will serve as a reference point for chemists of every subdiscipline, including synthetic organic chemists and medicinal chemists. It will also be valuable to bioinformatic and computational biologists, to pharmacognocists and chemical ecologists, to bioengineers and synthetic biologists.