Modeling

After all the computational modeling that we learned about this week, I was curious which other ways chemists use modeling. One important development is modeling the interactions of complex chemical systems, and Levitt and Warshel were awarded the Nobel prize in chemistry in 2013 for developing a new way of modeling these interactions. Their modeling system integrates quantum mechanical analysis of key atoms in the reaction (which is computationally intensive) and classical mechanical analysis of the rest of the atoms (which is much easier to compute). This method allows researchers to analyze molecules such as enzymes much more efficiently and in more depth because only some parts of the protein are heavily involved in the protein’s function.