Chemical biology

'Chemical biology' refers to various teaching and/or research programs in chemistry that focus on integrating chemistry and biology through the use of chemistry-based methodologies and tools for biological discovery and application. 'Chemical biology' refers to the concept of programmatic biological discovery through chemistry:

• bringing chemical solutions to biological problems
• chemists
  • learning biology
  • working to advance the understanding of biology
  • working to manipulate biology and create new biology
  • finding in biology solutions to problems in chemistry

Introduction

Harvard University gives this description of their program:

The goal of the Chemical Biology Program is biological discovery, and its approach is the seamless integration of principles and experimental techniques drawn from both chemistry and biology...The focus of chemical biology is on biology, which distinguishes it from traditional chemistry, and it uses chemical tools, which distinguishes it from traditional biology. The field also has deep connections with medicine and pharmacology.

Professors Andrew D Miller, Imperial College, London, and Julian Tanner, University of Hong Kong, in their recent (2008) Essentials of Chemical Biology, describe the enterprise of chemical biology as follows:

Chemical biology is a new, rapidly emerging branch of chemistry that represents all aspects of chemical endeavour, devoted to understanding the way biology works at the molecular level. Chemical biology is unashamedly inter-disciplinary, and chemical biology research is essentially problem driven and not discipline driven. Organic, physical, inorganic and analytical chemistry all contribute towards the chemical biology whole.

Some might say that chemical biology is just another way to rebadge biochemistry. However, such a comment misses the point. Biochemistry may have started as a discipline devoted to the study of individual biological macromolecules, but this discipline has been steadily evolving into increasingly descriptive, empirical studies of larger and larger macromolecular assemblies, structures and interacting molecular networks. The molecular increasingly gives ground to the cellular.

In contrast, chemical biology is about chemistry-trained graduates and researchers taking a fundamental interest in the way biology works. Consequently, the focus is on the molecular and the quantitative, where molecular properties are investigated, studied and then gradually linked to macromolecular and cellular behaviour where possible. This is a fundamentally 'bottom-up' approach to understanding biology in keeping with the chemist's natural enthusiasm and appreciation for molecular structure and behaviour first and foremost. | (Editor note: The original single-paragraph quote split into three paragraphs for ease of reading.)

The Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University describe chemical biology as follows:

A central goal of chemical biology is to harness the power of synthetic organic chemistry to discover and to elucidate molecular pathways fundamental in cellular, developmental and disease biology. The creation and use of small molecules to probe the genome is a fertile area of research that facilitates the translation of biological insights into powerful new medicines.

For more on the scope of chemical biology, see the full descriptions of the chemical biology programs at the large number of institutions listed on the External Links subpage. (Click the External Links tab in the banner at the top of this page.)

Teaching chemical biology

The description of a graduate-level course in chemical biology required of students in the Chemical Biology Graduate Program at the University of California, Berkeley, will give a keyhole view of the students' preparation for the broad interdiscipinary enterprise of chemical biology:

The first section of the course examines methods for biomolecule modification, techniques for the de novo synthesis of peptides and oligonucleotides, common strategies for protein expression and purification, and the growing list of in vivo labeling techniques that have become available. Following this section, basic principles of enzyme function and natural product biosynthesis are discussed with the same level of detailed mechanistic analysis that is used by organic chemists. This portion of the class also provides a convenient opportunity to discuss the mechanism of action for many common pharmaceuticals. The course concludes with discussions on a series of contemporary topics chosen to demonstrate chemical biology in action. Lecture subjects in this portion include diversity-oriented synthesis, biological studies using fluorescence and resonance energy transfer, techniques for drug and gene delivery, and chemical studies of ion channel function.