The ‘Molecule of the Month’ Website—An Extraordinary Chemistry Educational Resource Online for over 20 Years

Abstract

The Molecule of the Month website () is an educational resource that is celebrating its 20th anniversary. Here we reflect on its pioneering role in promoting new technology for visualizing and presenting chemical information on the web, as well as its achievements, as a free educational resource, both as a teaching aid and as a multi-user, multi-author learning platform. We discuss the legal aspects of such sites, as well as issues around how to make the content permanent. Finally, we look forward to how such sites may evolve in the future.

Molecule of the Month: Relating Organic Chemistry Principles to Drug Action

“…Use of a clinically approved drug is key to applying contextualization of organic chemistry, medicinal chemistry, and pharmacology to the practice of pharmacy. While other MOM resources are freely available on the Internet, tailoring the choice of the molecule (top 200 used drugs) and questions pertaining to pharmacy-relevant information is key for success in a pharmacy curriculum. Each MOM is composed of four questions following the same format each month: one question is to name the MOM from the structure given; another question asks about some aspect of the MOM’s chemistry, such as identifying stereocenters, predicting lipophilicity, etc; another question asks about the mechanism of action of the MOM, linking back to the chemical structure; and another question asks for the indication that the MOM is used to treat (Table ).…”

Visualizing protein structures — tools and trends

“…To generate illustrative and compelling images for publications is another widespread and very common need reviewed by Goodsell and Jenkinson [27]. David Goodsell has provided for many years the captivating images of the molecule of the month [28], which can now be reproduced by everyone with the Illustrate software [29]. Previously, the introduction of ambient occlusion lighting with the Qutemol software [30] had already led to a significant improvement in the depth perception from static illustrative images.…”