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Synergy in Analytical Chemistry A
range of activities fall under the umbrella of analytical chemistry research, making it a diverse and exciting field. I like to view the field as comprising three types of activities: exploring new technology and phenomena, pushing the limits, and solving problems. Each activity is important, and each relies on the others in a synergistic fashion. Analytical chemists can radically advance the field by bringing new technology and phenomena to bear on chemical analyses. Electronics, lasers, and antibodies are examples of technologies or phenomena that have been “explored” for analytical purposes. These innovations led to new or vastly improved methods by enabling new levels of instrument control and data processing, improving sensitivity, and adding versatility and selectivity to binding assays. Nanoparticles, molecular biology, and microfabricated instrumentation are new technologies currently being explored. It is unknown how far they will go. However, each could bring something special to chemical analysis—unique optical, electrical, and mass transport properties with nanoscale materials; the specificity and amplification of biological processes with the tools of molecular biology; and the integration of many analytical processes in a chip-based laboratory for high-throughput or high-sensitivity analysis with microfabrication. By “pushing the limits”, analytical chemists improve existing methods or technologies according to theory. Pushing the limits has led to the exciting prospects of single molecule detection and experimentation, separations of complex mixtures in a few seconds, potentiometric sensors with picomolar detection limits, and mass spectrometers with attomole sensitivities. Currently, many research groups are pushing the limits of analysis speed and throughput to meet the challenges of combinatorial chemistry, proteomics, and genomics. By developing applications such as genomic sequencing and analysis, environmental analysis, and clinical assays, analytical chemists have enabled important discoveries, changed our world view, and improved our lives. Opportunities for novel applications continue to emerge to help us understand human diseases, unravel the brain and the chemical basis for behavior, track large-scale environmental changes, ensure a safe and abundant food supply, and search for extraterrestrial life. By solving problems, analytical chemists can reach
out to other disciplines and raise awareness of the power and significance of the analytical approach. Such activities are vital to the discipline because they promote analytical chemistry to the general scientific community and increase the prospects for continued financial support. Analytical researchers, however, often specialize in just one of my listed activities. Although this is natural, it can lead to the critical mistake of believing one activity is more important than the others. This can be damaging if it leads teachers to present a distorted image of the field. Such beliefs may also cause one to question the relevance of a new technology, the practicality of an elaborate instrument that pushes the limits of current technology, or the fundamental significance of an application. Although such criticisms may be valid, caution must be exercised that the criticisms do not arise from the view, or lead to the view, that one type of study is inherently more significant than others. All three activities rely on each other to keep analytical chemistry a healthy and thriving discipline. New technologies offer totally new approaches to chemical analysis. “Pushing the limits” transforms technologies into real methods and often leads to newer technologies. Both activities make new applications possible. Successful applications lead to new questions, a demand for new technologies, and a need to continue to push limits. To neglect any one of these activities would severely hamper our discipline. Instead, we must respect and promote all of these activities. When teaching, we can add lectures that specifically cover these different activities. When evaluating manuscripts and proposals, we can ask what the review standard should be for research that emphasizes new technology, pushes limits, or solves problems. Perhaps the best way to do this is to consciously include projects in our research portfolio that incorporate all of these activities.
Robert T. Kennedy University of Florida
[email protected] O C T O B E R 1 , 2 0 0 0 / A N A LY T I C A L C H E M I S T R Y
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EDITOR Royce W. Murray University of North Carolina
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