Introduction to Minireview Series: “Chemical Biology Meets Biological Chemistry”

What’s the difference between “biological chemistry” and “chemical biology”? One of us (JMG) received his Ph.D. at an institution where the biochemistry building was called the Laboratory of Chemical 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 biology is a scientific discipline spanning the fields of chemistry and biology that involves the application of chemical techniques and tools, often compounds produced through synthetic chemistry, to the study and manipulation of biological systems.”