A highly interdisciplinary field covering the chemical, physical, and biological features of complex chemical species held together and organized by means of intermolecular (noncovalent) bonding interactions. See also Chemical bonding; Intermolecular forces.
When a substrate binds to an enzyme or a drug to its target, and when signals propagate between cells, highly selective interactions occur between the partners that control the processes. Supramolecular chemistry is concerned with the study of the basic features of these interactions and with their implementation in biological systems as well as in specially designed nonnatural ones. In addition to biochemistry, its roots extend into organic chemistry and the synthetic procedures for receptor construction, into coordination chemistry and metal ion-ligand complexes, and into physical chemistry and the experimental and theoretical studies of interactions. See also Bioinorganic chemistry; Enzyme; Ligand field theory; Physical organic chemistry; Protein.
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