What is Chemical Biology?
Chemical biology is the application of chemical tools and ideas to biological problems. The approach is highly interdisciplinary and may involve the interaction of, for example, synthetic chemists with protein engineers. Molecules with specific biological properties may be designed or may be discovered by screening. With the small molecule tools in hand, their interactions with proteins may be probed using biophysical methods and the effects on cellular physiology established. The challenges which have been set by Nature are immense. A chemical approach may, however, be used to dissect many of the seemingly intractable problems which have been posed.
