The origins of chemical biology

The State of the Art of Chemical Biology

“…(If nothing else, this view is certainly in line with the scope of the research that is published in virtually all "chemical biology" journals.) The success of modern chemical biology research (although not generally appreciated, "chemical biology", if only unwittingly, has been practiced since the second half of the 18th century, as described in a very insightful recent commentary by Morrison and Weiss [29] ) is inextricably linked to technological advances that have occurred since the mid-1990s in areas such as assay development, screening technology (including organismal screens in C. elegans, Drosophila, or zebrafish), array technology, imaging technology, protein-structure determination, mass-spectrometric analysis, or bioinformatics, but also in synthesis methodology and synthesis technology (e.g., combinatorial synthesis or automated parallel synthesis). Before this background, what are the most important discoveries that have been made in chemical biology research over the last decade?…”

The Early Modern Kidney—Nephrology in and about the Nineteenth Century (Part 2)

“…This would ultimately put an end to the theory of phlogiston , the mysterious substance considered to be lost when combustible matter was burned, promulgated by the German chemist Georg Stahl (1660–1734) and replaced by the oxygen theory of combustion of Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794) in the closing years of the 18th century . Based on the studies of the Swedish apothecary‐chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele (1742–1786) and the British clergyman‐scientist Joseph Priestley (1733–1804), both of whom Lavoisier was in direct communication with and whose studies of combustion and respiration he repeated, refined, and synthesized into his theory of oxygen ( air eminently respirable ), which in the process of combustion and respiration is consumed and supplanted by carbon dioxide ( aeriform calcic acid ) . In doing so, Lavoisier introduced quantitative methods (weights, volumes) into chemistry, extended his studies into the composition of water, and with his contemporary Claude‐Louis Berthollet (1748–1822) identified the principal irreducible chemical elements of organic matter as carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen .…”

“…Nowhere was the impact of this systematic investigative enterprise on the accrual of new knowledge as evident as it was in the basic medical sciences, which flourished and transformed medicine into the scientific discipline that it is today . In the cumulative and progressive nature of scientific knowledge in general and that of medical knowledge in particular, two distinct and separate avenues of inquiry were instrumental in the evolution of understanding bodily functions in general and the function of the kidney in particular . One venue, with its roots in the physical sciences, applied the basic tools of chemistry to exploring the properties and interactions of organic elements and to quantifying the chemical and electrical forces inherent in solutions that determine the exchange of fluids and solutes across membranes.…”

Interplay between the Chemical Space and the Biological Space

“…Nature Chemical Biology, one of the leading journals in chemical biology, defines chemical biology as ''both the use of chemistry to advance a molecular understanding of biology and the harnessing of biology to advance chemistry'' [12]. Indeed, chemical biology spans the fields of chemistry and biology, which involves the application of chemical techniques and tools, often compounds produced through synthetic chemistry, to the study and manipulation of biological systems.…”