ABSTRACT
Since the rst reports in 1986,1,2 microwave heating has found wide use in organic chemistry as evidenced by the number of books3-8 and review articles9-17 in this eld. The interest is due to the advantages microwave heating can bring over conventional approaches. Reactions can be complete in minutes instead of hours and often product yields are higher. In addition, microwave heating is very well suited to help address the tenets of sustainability, it being used widely to facilitate organic synthesis in environmentally benign solvents and for the preparation of biodegradable target molecules.18-22 However, as this book shows, the use of microwave heating is not limited solely to organic chemistry. One of the newest and perhaps fastest-growing
applications of microwave-assisted chemistry is in the area of biosciences. This chapter will highlight the use of microwave irradiation as a tool to facilitate a variety of bio-related reactions including the synthesis of peptides23,24 and the preparation of samples for proteomic analysis,25-27 as well as present some of the newest developments in the area of microwave-assisted biosciences. In each example presented, the use of microwave energy provides some advantage over conventional methods.
