Towards quantitative biochemistry: research and reports in biochemistry

Nikolay V Dokholyan
Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of North Carolina, School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Since the mid twentieth century the field of biochemistry has evolved significantly (Figure 1). Advances made in the fields of structural, chemical, and systems biology, physics, and computation have shaped the new field of biochemistry such that the emphasis became the cellular-wide view of molecular life at the atomic scale. The principal paradigm in the field shifted from focusing on a single or a few biological molecules to focusing on their cellular- and intracellular-wide networks. This shift has resulted in more interdisciplinary approaches to biochemical research, which nowadays combines techniques and strategies from a broad range of fields. The evolution of the field of biochemistry resulted in closer connections to other fields, such as medicinal chemistry, physiology, and medicine. Biochemistry is also one of the central components of the emerging translational medicine paradigm.