History of biochemistry
[8][9] Nevertheless, several sources cite German chemist Carl Neuberg as having coined the term for the new discipline in 1903,[10][11] and some credit it to Franz Hofmeister.
Much of biochemistry deals with the structures and functions of cellular components such as proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, nucleic acids and other biomolecules; their metabolic pathways and flow of chemical energy through metabolism; how biological molecules give rise to the processes that occur within living cells; it also focuses on the biochemical processes involved in the control of information flow through biochemical signalling, and how they relate to the functioning of whole organisms.
the field has had success in explaining living processes such that now almost all areas of the life sciences from botany to medicine are engaged in biochemical research.
Biochemistry studies the chemical properties of important biological molecules, like proteins, and in particular the chemistry of enzyme-catalyzed reactions.
Other areas of biochemistry include the genetic code (DNA, RNA), protein synthesis, cell membrane transport, and signal transduction.
The ancient Greeks' conception of biochemistry was linked with their ideas on matter and disease, where good health was thought to come from a balance of the four elements and four humors in the human body.
In more recent times, the study of chemistry was marked by milestones such as the development of Mendeleev's periodic table, Dalton's atomic model, and the conservation of mass theory.
This was first done for lysozyme, an enzyme found in tears, saliva, and egg whites that digests the coating of some bacteria; the structure was solved by a group led by David Chilton Phillips and published in 1965.
The earliest of all metabolic studies began during the early thirteenth century (1213–1288) by a Muslim scholar from Damascus named Ibn al-Nafis.
[28][29][30] These discoveries led to Krebs being awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology in 1953,[31] which was shared with the German biochemist Fritz Albert Lipmann who also codiscovered the essential cofactor coenzyme A.
These discoveries are largely attributed to the German chemist Emil Fischer who received the Nobel Prize in chemistry nearly 60 years earlier.
The significance of the pathway shown in the adjacent image is that by identifying the individual steps in this process doctors and researchers are able to pinpoint sites of metabolic malfunctions such as pyruvate kinase deficiency that can lead to severe anemia.
Since then, biochemistry has advanced, especially since the mid-20th century, with the development of new techniques such as chromatography, X-ray diffraction, NMR spectroscopy, radioisotopic labelling, electron microscopy and molecular dynamics simulations.
Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is the primary gene amplification technique that has revolutionized modern biochemistry.
This is yet another testament to the fact that the advancement of technology is just as crucial to sciences such as biochemistry as is the painstaking research that leads to the development of theoretical concepts.
