Chemical Biology Meets Biological Chemistry Minireview Series

Abstract

Abstract What's the difference between and biology? One of us (JMG) received his Ph.D. at an institution where the biochemistry building was called the Laboratory of Biology, but that was a long time ago and things have changed. Biological chemistry (or biochemistry), that is the study of life processes at the molecular level, is now quite distinct from chemical biology. According to Wikipedia, Chemical is a scientific discipline spanning the fields of chemistry and that involves the application of chemical techniques and tools, often compounds produced through synthetic chemistry, to the study and manipulation of biological systems. Throughout the 105-year history of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, papers using techniques of chemistry to understand biological processes have appeared in the Journal, and in fact, many papers describing the development of chemical reagents and small molecule enzyme inhibitors top the all-time most-cited list of JBC papers (see http://www.jbc.org/reports/most-cited). However, several new journals have now emerged to emphasize the growing importance of biology as a unique discipline, albeit within the bounds of biological The following minireviews emphasize the importance of uniting synthetic chemistry with biochemistry toward understanding complex biological processes; in other words, how relevant biology is to chemistry. These reviews highlight both the application of chemical techniques toward understanding life processes at the molecular level (i.e., biochemistry) and the development of synthetic compounds either as tools for research or as candidate therapeutics for human diseases. These topics are naturally within the scope of interest of the JBC.