Probing cellular systems with chemistry.

Overlooking one of the world’s finest natural harbors, the San Diego Convention Center played host to the 46th annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) on December 9–13, 2006. More than 6,000 scientists and over 3,500 presentations of scientific research spanned traditional cell biology topics and extended to include cell biology of diseases, biosensors and computational applications in cell biology. The research presented below underscores the growing role chemical biology is playing in advancing cell biology and drug discovery (Fig. 1) and presents some of the main challenges currently facing chemical biologists and chemical biology research. The use of chemical genetic screening and activity-based assays was a common thread in many ASCB presentations. The goal of such techniques is to identify small molecules that will allow scientists to address a host of interesting questions in cell biology. In many cases, RNA interference (RNAi) approaches provided an important complement to these small-molecule approaches. Advances in cellular imaging methods were also featured prominently at the meeting and comprise another area in which chemical biology is having an impact on the study of cellular processes.