Chemical Bology and Pharmaceutical Chemistry

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Chemical biology is one of several interdisciplinary sciences that tend to differ from older, reductionist fields and whose goals are to achieve a description of scientific holism. Chemical biology has scientific, historical and philosophical roots in medicinal chemistry, supramolecular chemistry, bioorganic chemistry, pharmacology, genetics, biochemistry, and metabolic engineering.

Chemical biologists used automated synthesis of diverse small molecule libraries in order to perform high-throughput analysis of biological processes. Such experiments may lead to discovery of small molecules with antibiotic or chemotherapeutic properties. These combinatorial chemistry approaches are identical to those employed in the discipline of pharmacology. Many research programs are also focused on employing natural biomolecules to perform biological tasks or to support a new chemical method.

In this regard, chemical biology researchers have shown that DNA can serve as a template for synthetic chemistry, self-assembling proteins can serve as  structural scaffold for new materials, and RNA can be evolved in vitro to produce new catalytic function. Additionally, heterobifunctional (two-sided) synthetic small molecules such as dimerizers or PROTACs bring two proteins together inside cells, which can synthetically induce important new biological functions such as targeted protein degradation.

The advances in modern sequencing technologies in the late 1990s allowed scientists to investigate DNA of communities of organisms in their natural environments ("eDNA"), without culturing individual species in the lab. This metagenomic approach enabled scientists to study a wide selection of organisms that were previously not characterized due in part to an incompetent growth condition.

Sources of eDNA include soils, ocean, subsurface, hot springs, hydrothermal vents, polar ice caps, hypersaline habitats, and extreme pH environments. Of the many applications of metagenomics, researchers such as Jo Handelsman, Jon Clardy, and Robert M. Goodman, explored metagenomic approaches toward the discovery of biologically active molecules such as antibiotics. Pharmaceutical chemistry is a discipline of chemistry and pharmacology.

Medicinal chemistry is interested in finding out about the chemical properties drugs have, and about the synthesis and production of drugs. In general, medicinal chemistry is seen as a specialization of organic chemistry. Pharmacy is the science and practice of discovering, producing, preparing, dispensing, and reviewing drugs, aiming to ensure the safe, effective, and affordable use of drugs. It is a miscellaneous science as it links health sciences with pharmaceutical sciences and natural sciences.

 

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