In supramolecular chemistry, host-guest chemistry describes complexes that are composed of two or more molecules or ions that are held together in unique structural relationships by forces other than those of full covalent bonds. Host-guest chemistry encompasses the idea of molecular recognition and interactions through noncovalent bonding. Noncovalent bonding is critical in maintaining the three-dimensional structure of large molecules, such as proteins and is involved in many biological processes in which large molecules bind specifically but transiently to one another. There are four commonly mentioned types of non-covalent interactions: hydrogen bonds, ionic bonds, van der Waals forces, and hydrophobic interactions.
Read more about Host-guest Chemistry: Common Host Molecules, Thermodynamic Principles of Host-Guest Interactions
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“Science with its retorts would have put me to sleep; it was the opportunity to be ignorant that I improved. It suggested to me that there was something to be seen if one had eyes. It made a believer of me more than before. I believed that the woods were not tenantless, but choke-full of honest spirits as good as myself any day,—not an empty chamber, in which chemistry was left to work alone, but an inhabited house,—and for a few moments I enjoyed fellowship with them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)