CLASSICAL ELECTROSTATICS IN BIOLOGY AND CHEMISTRY

A major revival in the use of classical electrostatics as an approach to the study of charged and polar molecules in aqueous solution has be en made possible through the development of fast numerical and computa tional methods to solve the Poisson-Boltzmann equation for solute mole cules that have complex shapes and charge distributions. Graphical vis ualization of the calculated electrostatic potentials generated by pro teins and nucleic acids has revealed insights into the role of electro static interactions in a wide range of biological phenomena. Classical electrostatics has also proved to be a successful quantitative tool y ielding accurate descriptions of electrical potentials, diffusion limi ted processes, pH-dependent properties of proteins, ionic strength-dep endent phenomena, and the solvation free energies of organic molecules .