It has been decided to hold a three-day symposium focused on the three principal special areas which comprise the field of bio-organic chemistry. One session will deal with the mimics of biological systems. This will include mimics of enzymes, of membranes, and of biological transport systems. Such work is relevant to understanding natural biological processes, and the successful mimics of these processes which are developed have the potential to be important medicinal compounds. The second section deals with the chemistry of natural products of biological importance. Here the focus will be detailed chemical studies to understand the biosynthesis of antibiotics, porphyrins, and other natural products which are either important metabolically or useful as medicinal substances. The understanding sought in this area is of considerable health relevance, since the detailed understanding of metabolism is a basis of many therapeutic schemes; an understanding of the biosynthetic pathways involved in the production of medicinally active compounds could also be helpful in the design of analogs and of chemical synthetic pathways. The third area has to do with the chemistry of biological macromolecules, and will focus on organic chemical work done on proteins and nucleic acids. The biological importance of these substances is very clear. Increasingly, bioorganic chemists are devoting their attention to modifying proteins or nucleic acids chemically and designing specific reagents to perform selective transformations of enzymes and other important proteins. Some very successful approaches to medicinal chemistry involve such work, and the chemical work on these key biological molecules is also extremely helpful in studies of biological function.
