biochemistry

Science concerned with the chemistry of living organisms: the structure and reactions of proteins (such as enzymes), nucleic acids, carbohydrates, and lipids.

Its study has led to an increased understanding of life processes, such as those by which organisms synthesize essential chemicals from food materials, store and generate energy, and pass on their characteristics through their genetic material. A great deal of medical research is concerned with the ways in which these processes are disrupted. Biochemistry also has applications in agriculture and in the food industry (for instance, in the use of enzymes).

In the 1990s biochemistry was revolutionized by the widespread application of new methods of molecular biology, allowing researchers to manipulate genes and study the consequences of genetic differences. At the beginning of the 21st century, a revival of chemistry-based methods in biochemistry produced the new subdiscipline known as chemical biology.