EDITORIAL
Analytical Chemistry of Biological Systems A persistent research frontier is the analytical chemistry of the mixtures of chemical substances generated by living organisms. The problems of separation, molecular identification, and quantification of these mixtures are enormous. They are the ultimate molecular mishmash. The challenges they offer have demanded, and produced, many new concepts in chemical measurement science. The essential ideas of chromatography were invented many years ago in the face of the challenge to separate complex biomixtures. So were the forms of electrophoresis performed in gels -as well as the modern versions that depend on capillaries. High mass forms of MS and ultra-high-field NMR spectroscopy emerged in response to the macromolecular sizes of biomolecules. These important analytical tools might not have been invented when they were, and perhaps not even at all, had the complexity of biological systems been less than it is. Much of analytical chemistry today h a s been shaped by the simple fact of not-sosimple biomolecular complexity. Analytical chemists need to appreciate the important role of biocomplexity in the evolution of measurement science and the opportunities for participating in its continuing evolution. This issue contains several contributions on this subject. Barry Karger speaks of the need and opportunities in bioanalytical research in his REPORT and correctly points to the significance of including biochemistry in the educational pathways of our future colleagues. The A pages also include a discussion by Michael Thompson and Ulrich Krull of molecular recognition and its use in biosensor transduction schemes as well as FOCUS articles by Elke Jordan and Maynard Olson that
provide overviews of background, goals, and analytical needs of the Human Genome Project. Katheleen Gardiner gives us a Perspective article on pulsed field gel electrophoresis and its impact on high mass biopolymer separations. Associate Editor Walter Herlihy, in addition to his leadership role in planning for these special contributions for FOCUS and Perspectives, has prepared a commentary on the analytical problems posed by the project. The Human Genome Project substantially ups the ante of the biocomplexity challenge. It includes not only the usual elements of analytical specificity, accuracy, and sensitivity-notably in tagging and sequencing stepsbut also such a huge number of steps as to demand orders of magnitude improvement of sample throughput. We must not only be good, we must be quick and cheap. This combination of economic and time challenges will surely require some new approaches and measurement systems from the analytical chemist. There are, for example, potential lessons that can be learned from the economies of scale developed in the microelectronics industry. It may be acceptable that an analytical instrument designed for a highly specific measurement does not do it very rapidly-if a blizzard of them can be stamped out on chips. It is also possible that improvements in inexpensive analytical measurements fostered by t h e H u m a n Genome Project will have important societal spin-offs, such as in consumer do-ityourself measurements. Progress in the analytical chemistry of the project will be fascinating to observe.
ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY, VOL. 63, NO. 7, APRIL 1, 1991
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