Tuesday, November 13, 2012

What is Molecular Biology?

What is Molecular Biology?





Molecular biology is the study of biology at a molecular level. The field overlaps with other areas of biology and chemistry, particularly genetics and biochemistry. Molecular biology chiefly concerns itself with understanding the interactions between the various systems of a cell, including the interactions between DNARNA and protein biosynthesis as well as learning how these interactions are regulated.


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Relationship to other biological sciences

Researchers in molecular biology use specific techniques native to molecular biology, but increasingly combine these with techniques and ideas from genetics and biochemistry. There is not a defined line between these disciplines. The figure above is a schematic that depicts one possible view of the relationship between the fields:
  • ''Biochemistry'' is the study of the chemical substances and vital processes occurring in living organisms. Biochemists focus heavily on the role, function, and structure of biomolecules. The study of the chemistry behind biological processes and the synthesis of biologically active molecules are examples of biochemistry.
  • ''Genetics'' is the study of the effect of genetic differences on organisms. Often this can be inferred by the absence of a normal component (e.g. one gene). The study of "mutants" – organisms which lack one or more functional components with respect to the so-called "wild type" or normal phenotype. Genetic interactions (epistasis) can often confound simple interpretations of such "knock-out" studies.
  • ''Molecular biology'' is the study of molecular underpinnings of the process of replication, transcription and translation of the genetic material. The central dogma of molecular biology where genetic material is transcribed into RNA and then translated into protein, despite being an oversimplified picture of molecular biology, still provides a good starting point for understanding the field. This picture, however, is undergoing revision in light of emerging novel roles for RNA.
Much of the work in molecular biology is quantitative, and recently much work has been done at the interface of molecular biology and computer science in bioinformatics and computational biology. As of the early 2000s, the study of gene structure and function, molecular genetics, has been amongst the most prominent sub-field of molecular biology.
Increasingly many other loops of biology focus on molecules, either directly studying their interactions in their own right such as in cell biology and developmental biology, or indirectly, where the techniques of molecular biology are used to infer historical attributes of populations or species, as in fields in evolutionary biology such as population genetics and phylogenetics. There is also a long tradition of studying biomolecules "from the ground up" in biophysics.

Techniques of molecular biology


Techniques of molecular biology




Since the late 1950s and early 1960s, molecular biologists have learned to characterize, isolate, and manipulate the molecular components of cells and organisms. These components includeDNA, the repository of genetic information; RNA, a close relative of DNA whose functions range from serving as a temporary working copy of DNA to actual structural and enzymatic functions as well as a functional and structural part of the translational apparatus; and proteins, the major structural and enzymatic type of molecule in cells.

Relationship to other biological sciences


Relationship to other biological sciences

Schematic relationship between biochemistry, genetics, and molecular biology
Researchers in molecular biology use specific techniques native to molecular biology but increasingly combine these with techniques and ideas from genetics and biochemistry. There is not a defined line between these disciplines. The figure above is a schematic that depicts one possible view of the relationship between the fields:
  • Biochemistry is the study of the chemical substances and vital processes occurring in living organismsBiochemists focus heavily on the role, function, and structure of biomolecules. The study of the chemistry behind biological processes and the synthesis of biologically active molecules are examples of biochemistry.
  • Genetics is the study of the effect of genetic differences on organisms. This can often be inferred by the absence of a normal component (e.g. one gene). The study of "mutants" – organisms which lack one or more functional components with respect to the so-called "wild type" or normal phenotype. Genetic interactions (epistasis) can often confound simple interpretations of such "knock-out" studies.
  • Molecular biology is the study of molecular underpinnings of the processes of replicationtranscriptiontranslation, and cell function. Thecentral dogma of molecular biology where genetic material is transcribed into RNA and then translated into protein, despite being an oversimplified picture of molecular biology, still provides a good starting point for understanding the field. This picture, however, is undergoing revision in light of emerging novel roles for RNA.
Much of the work in molecular biology is quantitative, and recently much work has been done at the interface of molecular biology and computer science in bioinformatics and computational biology. As of the early 2000s, the study of gene structure and function, molecular genetics, has been among the most prominent sub-field of molecular biology.
Increasingly many other loops of biology focus on molecules, either directly studying their interactions in their own right such as in cell biology and developmental biology, or indirectly, where the techniques of molecular biology are used to infer historical attributes of populations or species, as in fields in evolutionary biology such as population genetics and phylogenetics. There is also a long tradition of studying biomolecules "from the ground up" in biophysics.

Molecular biology


Molecular biology

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Molecular biology  is the branch of biology that deals with the molecular basis of biological activity.
 This field overlaps with other areas of biology and chemistry, particularlygenetics and biochemistry. Molecular biology
 chiefly concerns itself with understanding the interactions between the various systems of a cell, including the interact
ions between the different types of DNARNA and protein biosynthesis as well as learning how these interactions are 
regulated.
Writing in Nature in 1961, William Astbury described molecular biology as
"...not so much a technique as an approach, an approach from the viewpoint of the so-called basic sciences with
the leading idea of searching below the large-scale manifestations of classical biology for the corresponding molecular plan.

It is concerned particularly with the forms of biological molecules and [...] is predominantly three-dimensional

and structural—which does not mean, however, that it is merely a refinement of morphology.

It must at the same time inquire into genesis and function."[1]