Engineering the chemistry of biology

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Professor Dek Woolfson is based in the School of Chemistry and holds a joint appointment with the Department of Biochemistry, because his research is done at the interface between chemistry and biology. 'We often think of biology as something magical,' he says 'but in many ways it's really applied chemistry. His current research is moving into the exciting and potentially controversial field of synthetic biology. Individually, the words 'synthetic' and 'biology' seem to contradict each other: isn't biology ' life and living organisms ? just the opposite of synthetic? Apparently not, for today synthetic biology is a rapidly advancing new field of science. The phrase refers to the design and fabrication of biological components and systems that do not already exist in the natural world, as well as to the redesign and fabrication of existing biological systems. Woolfson is largely interested in understanding how molecules are built and assembled in biology and then applying this to build new molecules with desired functions. 'Synthetic biology is about improving our ability to engineer biology,' says Woolfson, 'and to engineer biology you have to understand the underlying chemistry. I don't think that this takes the wonder out of biology, it just gives us a handle and the tools to get in there and try to understand some of its processes. Indeed, the first thing Woolfson does when setting out to engineer biology is to sit at a computer to look at the structure and chemistry of natural molecules, particularly proteins. He then asks the question, 'What are the important bits of the chemistry that lead to the wonderful 3D structures proteins make and the functions they perform'?