Chemical biology

'Chemical biology' refers to various academic teaching and research programs integrating chemistry and biology, focusing on biological discovery and applications using chemical tools, thus defining the concepts of programmatic biological discovery through chemistry, and of bringing chemical solutions to biological problems.

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 essen¬tially problem driven and not discipline driven. Organic, physical, inorganic and analytical chemistry all contribute towards the chemical biology whole. Some might say that chemical bi¬ology 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 quan¬titative, 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.

For more on the scope of chemical biology, see the full programmatic descriptions at:

• Harvard’s Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology.
  • "The Department’s faculty and its affiliated student scientists share a rich training in the unique tools of chemical inquiry and commitment to scientific investigation at the molecular level."

• The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology. The Scripps Research Institute.
  • "The Skaggs Institute's mission is to improve human health with cures for diseases, and to do so by supporting research at the interface of chemistry and biology."

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.