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Specialist Periodical Reports provide systematic and detailed review coverage of progress in the major areas of chemical research. Written by experts in their specialist fields the series creates a unique service for the active research chemist, supplying regular critical in-depth accounts of progress in particular areas of chemistry. For over 80 years the Royal Society of Chemistry and its predecessor, the Chemical Society, have been publishing reports charting developments in chemistry, which originally took the form of Annual Reports. However, by 1967 the whole spectrum of chemistry could no longer be contained within one volume and the series Specialist Periodical Reports was born. The Annual Reports themselves still existed but were divided into two, and subsequently three, volumes covering Inorganic, Organic and Physical Chemistry. For more general coverage of the highlights in chemistry they remain a 'must'. Since that time the SPR series has altered according to the fluctuating degree of activity in various fields of chemistry. Some titles have remained unchanged, while others have altered their emphasis along with their titles; some have been combined under a new name whereas others have had to be discontinued. The current list of Specialist Periodical Reports can be seen on the inside flap of this volume.
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A Specialist Periodical Report Amino Acids and Peptides Volume 22 A Review of the Literature Published during 1989 Senior Reporter J. H. Jones, University of Oxford Reporters G. C. Barrett, Oxford Polytechnic J. S. Davies, University College of Swansea D. T. Elmore, University of Oxford P. M. Hardy, University of Exeter R. W. Hay, University of St Andrews K. B. Nolan, The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland C. H. Frydrych, Beecham Pharmaceuticals ISBN 0-85 186-204-7 ISSN 0269-7521 @ The Royal Society of Chemistry, 1991 All Rights Reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form of by any means - graphic, electronic, including photocopying, recording, taping, or information storage and retrieval systems - without written permission fiom the Royal Society of Chemistry Published by the Royal Society of Chemistry Thomas Graham House, Cambridge CB4 4WF Printed and bound in England by Bookcraft (Bath) Ltd. Preface During the year under review, peptide science continued its relentless growth. Output still increases, beyond, it seems, control. What might loosely be called straight peptide chemistry has more than five thousand workers engaged in it full-time, producing around a thousand publications a year and flocking to international meetings in their hundreds. Furthermore, what is published on some topics is, as we all know, less complete (and sometimes, one suspects, less interesting) than that which is not, because commercial considerations impose paranoid secrecy. With the subject now so extensive, and'its aficionados so numerous, the emergence of specialised societies was inevitable. Many countries have had semi-formal peptide discussion groups for some time (the UK Peptide and Protein Group was initiated under the auspices of the Chemical and Biochemical Societies as long ago as 1968), and an informal European Peptide Committee has been organising symposia for over thirty years. This movement has now gone a stage further with the formation of, and approval of governing statutes for, a European Peptide Society, in 1989; this was followed by similar formalitites for the birth of an American Peptide Society and a Japanese Peptide Society, both early in 1990. In only a few months the enrolment of the European Peptide Society had risen to over seven hundred, powerful evidence of the field's strength. Balliol College. Oxford John Jones Contents Chapter 1 Amino Acids By G