ChemBioOffice Ultra 11 is a highly professional chemistry and biology application for chemists and biologists. The application provides an efficient means of correlating biological and chemical information. The application is designed only for Windows 2000, XP and Vista (32 bit).

This review was assessed using Parallels for Mac running OSX 10.5.x., using XP. A separate version of ChemBio Draw Ultra 11 is available for the Mac. The components in ChemBio Office Ultra are: ChemBioDraw Ultra 11.0, MestReC Std, ChemScript Pro 11.0, ChemBio3D Ultra 11.0, GAMESS Pro 11.0, ChemFinder Ultra 11.0, ChemBioViz Ultra 11.0, BioAssay Ultra 11.0, Inventory Ultra 11.0, E-Notebook Ultra 11.0, ChemDraw/Excel, and CombiChem/Excel, the ChemDraw and Chem3D ActiveX Pro Plugins & Controls.

There are number of databases that require subscriptions which are provided for the first year: ChemINDEX (Index, RXN, NCI & AIDS) and ChemACX and ePub. ChemFinder is supported for the CS Oracle Cartridge, and a 1-year subscription to ChemACX to the ChemOffice Ultra 2008 suite.

In Parallels it was not possible to access the Bioassay and Inventory Applications.

A big plus is the applications ability to indicate types of surfaces as well as show different types of models from ball and stick, wire mesh to space filling models of the molecule being used.

Molecular orbital images as solids and wire mesh can also be depicted to show molecular activity. See images 2 and 3.

A bonus in this application is the ability to provide atoms with their respective symbols without detracting from the model. Various surfaces including Huckel and Connally models are available. A translucent image of the orbitals is also available - see figure 4.

Beside the 3D image is the Chem Draw structure of the molecule that can be positioned exactly as the 3D image. This is useful in understanding the molecule as well as the data that is associated with it which can be obtained from the ChemDraw Ultra application or the subscription packages.

Surface mapping colours can also be altered according to your intent

Solvent surface models can also be coloured to suit your publication needs. Figure 5 indicates the surface with coloured atoms. Figure 6 indicates the total density of the molecule.

However in ChemDraw supra molecules can be redrawn and then named (20S)-19-(2-(4,5-dihydroxy-2-(hydroxymethyl)-6-methoxytetrahydro-2H-pyran-3-yloxy)-2-hydroxyethyl)-3,6,9,13-tetrakis((S)-1,2-dihydroxyethyl)-16-((1S)-1,2-dihydroxypropyl)-5,8,14,17-tetrakis(hydroxymethyl)-4,7,10,12,15,18-hexaoxadocosane-1,2,20,21-tetraol

Chemical structures can also be rotated, and have their properties pasted in with the structure, see figure 11.

Biological drawings and templates can be rotated through the Object menu. There is a good array of templates for biologists. Included amongst others are enzymes, receptors, ion channel, Golgi, tRNA, micelles, endoplasmic reticulum, immunoglobin, ribosome and mitochondria. These can be drawn easily to suit the needs of biological drawings.

Although very little has been written about the BioDraw component it is still a very valuable tool for biologists. Allowing pathways to be drawn as well as enzymes, protein, RNA, DNA. An example of a simple pathway is given in figure 12.The ChemDraw component allows for the drawing of biochemical reactions.

Reactions are easily interpreted and the Rxn written next to the atom site where the reaction has taken place can easily identify the reaction site. Another useful component is that the reaction interpreter colours the component reactions.

The E-Notebook is a very handy tool for record keeping, allowing the management of electronic information. Managing information such as stoichiometry, analytical methods, spectra and other related information is simple and very efficient by conducting searches using dates, key words, substructures and spreadsheets just to name a few. You can customize the searches to suit your needs.

ChemBioDraw Ultra 11.0 includes a one-year subscription to ChemACX, Ashgate Drugs and ChemINDEX. There are four other databases included on the CD. CHEMPREPTM, CHEMSELECT, AIDS2006 and NCI2006. These databases are extremely useful as they can assist you in determining the availability of compounds and their related costs.

ChemFinder and ChemRXN are possibly the two most useful databases as they assist you in finding and planning and synthesising molecules. However these databases are add-ons and some of the files will not open in Windows, as a specific application is required.

I tried the GAMESS IR/Raman predictions, which were useful in providing IR absorbance bands but unfortunately most of the time it crashed before the calculations were completed.

The Help Menu is extremely informative and has a range of options incorporated in assisting the drawing and interpretation of the structure and the name. The hot keys are also very useful in enabling drawing corrections.

The ChemBio Office Draw has many neat little tricks in it that make it worth going through the Help Menu and the manual, which is very comprehensive.

ChemBio Office Ultra is a highly effective application that is simple and intuitive to use. It is a must have for all science researchers and educators. However, because not all scientists and educators use Windows the equivalent of a Mac version should be released. Even doing this review using Parallels on my Mac slowed me down in exploring the depths and tricks of ChemBio Office Ultra.

The professionalism in the application is a huge. The efficiency to keep track of your data, correlating chemical structures and their reactions provides a mechanism for deeper understanding of the intricacies of the biological and chemical worlds. Writing reports and assessments with this program takes the drudgery out of the workload!