A Glossary of Biotechnology Vocabulary

Combinatorial chemistry? Bioinformatics? As biotechnology advances, its lingo gets ever more complicated. Here are some quick definitions:

Bioinformatics: The application of computer technology to genomic analysis.

Biologics: Designing therapeutic proteins and antibodies, gene therapy and antisense drugs.

Combinatorial Chemistry: A technology that allows one to make thousands to millions of organic compounds of defined structure rapidly.

Compound Library: A sorted collection of different chemicals which can be tested for potency against target proteins. Once highly prized, with the advent of combinatorial chemistry libraries of hundreds of thousands of molecules can be had for only a few dollars per molecule.

Computational Chemistry: Computer assisted techniques for determining the structure of drug candidates based on three-dimensional models of their targets.

Genomics: The study of all genetic material in the chromosomes of a particular organism. Genome size is generally given as its total number of base pairs.

High-throughput Screening: Automating the process of testing the interaction between thousands of individual drug candidate molecules and a target protein.

Protein NMR: Using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to determine the three-dimensional structure of small proteins.

Structure-based Drug Design: Using the digital three-dimensional structure of a target molecule to "reverse-engineer" a drug candidate.

Target: A specific molecular entity suitable for therapeutic intervention.

Target Validation: Cellular and molecular biology studies to evaluate a gene's specific function in the disease process, resulting in a target.

X-Ray Crystallography: Determining the three-dimensional structure of a molecule, such as a protein target, by measuring how a crystal of the protein scatters x-rays. Source: Millennium Pharmaceuticals Annual Report Crimson Interviews.