A Shout Out to Chemical Biology, a Multidisciplinary Field Par Excellence

Abstract

Chemical biology is one of those fields that needs a bit of explaining. It is definitely a subfield within chemistry and at the same time it is now clear that it is an emerging discipline in both biology and translational research. It straddles the chemistry-biology-medicine continuum more effectively and better than any other named research endeavor (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1074552114002543).Having said that, I recognize that some will not be as convinced as I am, and as the editor of one of the most visible chemical biology journals, I spend a good amount of time thinking about what Cell Chemical Biology can do to change the perceptions and solidify the role of chemical biology as a major bridge between chemical, biological, and medical sciences. This is, of course, a very tall order, but I know that the journal, its editors, our editorial board members, authors, reviewers, and readers are bold and adventurous and sense that the community is heading in this direction.Some steps we take are huge, like making a decision to re-launch the journal as Cell Chemical Biology and better position ourselves as a basic biology journal while not relinquishing our role as a basic chemistry journal (http://www.cell.com/cell-chemical-biology/fulltext/S2451-9456(16)00002-7). Or shifting our scope and interests towards many of the fields in which the impact of chemical thinking and a chemical way of doing things is starting to be the norm, helping the fields progress at an accelerated rate. Some of those fields include cancer research, metabolism and physiology, microbiome and microbiology, systems and synthetic biology, and drug discovery and development, and they are all represented in Cell Chemical Biology: Best of 2016, a free to access and free to download collection of the most read papers we published last year (http://info.cell.com/best-of-cell-chemical-biology-2016).I encourage you to take a look at this collection as it provides a nice overview of the diversity of research ideas and approaches that reflect the breadth of chemical biology. The field itself, however, is far more innovative and productive than one journal can ever hope to cover, so in order to promote and showcase some of the chemical biology stories that have been published in other journals, we decided to launch the Cell Chemical Biology Call.We borrowed the name and the format from Cell Systems, one of our sister journals,. For them, the Call was an invitation to their community to help the journal define the basic principles of an exceptionally multidisciplinary and quickly evolving field such as systems biology and to discuss newly published papers that encapsulate those principles (http://www.cell.com/cell-systems/fulltext/S2405-4712(15)00193-3). Additionally, the Cell Systems Call offered a view into the future and where each of the ideas is heading.What struck me while considering the basic idea behind this format and reading some of the Cell Systems Calls, which are all published under the title “Principles of Systems Biology,” is how engaging these highlights are and how much interesting yet easy-to-digest information they offer. I also started noticing parallels between the two fields and some conceptual commonalities. Both systems biology and chemical biology are exceptionally broad and interface with a number of different, more established fields. They are also relative newcomers, and researchers in both fields have invested major efforts to carve out their scientific identities. This also means that both fields are vibrant and growing, with many early career researchers entering the arena using tools and strategies based on chemical or systems level thinking and asking the types of biological questions that can only be addressed using these new tools. Finally, and fundamentally, because both fields are multidisciplinary, they are perhaps more difficult and require more effort to define and explain.The Cell Chemical Biology Call will offer engaging glimpses of the vast array of chemical biology literature as well as providing insight into modern chemical biology thought and the future of the chemical biology field. Each Call is a brief 200 word summary that highlights the basic principles behind a recently published paper and an answer to the question “what next?” Unlike the Cell Systems Call, where anyone may submit their article, all the contributions to the Cell Chemical Biology Call are invited by the editors and they signal the types of questions we view as timely and relevant. We will also not shy away from highlighting stories that may seem tangential to chemical biology research interests if we feel that future directions would benefit from more chemical biology involvement.Three recent studies highlighted in the first ever Cell Chemical Biology Call fit these rough guidelines well, as they highlight a cell biology story in which the researchers find link between mitochondria and proteostasis, thus opening the need for new chemical tools to dissect this relationship further; a protein engineering story in which researchers develop a new class of enzyme-based “plug-and-play” biosensors; and a clinically relevant gut microbiome story in which researchers take a closer look at the fungal members of our microbiome and their metabolic and chemical diversity.I hope you take a look at “Principles of Chemical Biology: From MAGIC to Gut Fungi, via ”Plug-And-Play” Biosensors” (http://www.cell.com/cell-chemical-biology/fulltext/ S2451-9456(17)30101-0) and enjoy the inaugural Cell Chemical Biology Call. I also hope you take these highlights to be a call to action, a call to ask different and more provocative scientific questions, and a call to talk more frequently and perhaps even more passionately about what chemical biology is and what it can do to bridge the venerable fields of chemistry, biology and medicine.