Biochemistry

Biochemistry studies the chemical processes and substances occurring within living organisms, applying the methods of chemistry to biological questions such as how enzymes catalyse reactions, how cells extract energy from food, and how genetic information is encoded and expressed. It emerged as a distinct discipline from the late nineteenth century onward, as chemists including Emil Fischer began applying structural chemistry to sugars, proteins and other molecules of biological origin, work that itself extended the molecular stereochemistry Louis Pasteur had opened in 1848, and matured through the twentieth century with the discovery of metabolic pathways such as Hans Krebs's citric acid cycle. This atlas records its first dedicated foothold here in Fischer's lock and key model of enzyme specificity and Krebs's citric acid cycle, both wired to biology and chemistry as the discipline's parent fields.