Abstract

Shake-and-Bake Structures JASON Vs. The Volcano Something's Aflutter Is Race Passe? Unimpressed By The Press What Next--Wonderbras? Party Time Unsung Heroines No Accounting For Ethics Researchers at the University of Buffalo and its Hauptman- Woodward Medical Research Institute have developed a computer program--used in conjunction with a software package developed by Houston-based Molecular Structure Corp.--that will solve the structure of large biomolecules. The program is called Shake-and-Bake, after Shake 'n' Bake, the popular one-step cooking preparation, because its creators claim that it can determine the structure of complex molecules on a standard computer workstation with almost no user assistance. (According to institute researchers, the name violates no copyright laws because of the slight spelling change.) "Shake- and-Bake solves molecular structures like a black box, with no human intervention, given data with sufficient resolution," says Nobel chemistry laureate Herbert Hauptman, president of the institute and a professor of computer science at Buffalo, who conceived the software. "Scientists should be able to get an answer just by collecting X-ray diffraction data on a molecule and running it on the computer." Information on the software is available through World Wide Web at URL http://www.hwi.buffalo.edu/SnB or by calling Molecular Structure Corp. at