Chemical Biology
Applications and Techniques
Chapter One
Introduction
1.1 Chemical biology - the present
The phrase 'chemical biology' is gaining momentum in the literature, which is
documented by the increasing number of journals dedicated to this new discipline.
The fact that there is now a journal Nature Chemical Biology speaks for itself.
However, like many new developments in science chemical biology is adjusting itself
and while doing so is opening up to other disciplines and subdisciplines. Born out of a
truly (and for that reason synthetic) chemical approach towards unravelling biological
problems and systems, chemical biology was initially employed for high-throughput
screening of small molecules using biological (cellular) assays. Now, in the post-genomic
era, the manipulations of proteins and DNA by small molecules have been
added to the arsenal of chemical biology techniques. This compromises the generation
of chemical receptors or catalytic antibodies, the expansion of the genetic code with
unnatural amino acid ... read full excerpt from Chemical Biology: Applications and Techniques ebook
