Biochemistry
Dr. Jeannette Fabian
INTRODUCTION OF BIOCHEMISTRY
Biochemistry is the study of the chemical
composition of the living composition of the living
matter and the biochemical processes that govern life
activities throughout growth and maintenance. It comes
from the words “bio” means life and chemistry, thus the
“chemistry of life”. Unlike other fields. It focuses on the
processes that occur at molecular level by studying how
the structure of a molecular relates to its function.
It is important in the development of a wide
range of scientific disciplines which include
microbiology, cell, and molecular biology, botany,
genetics, forensics, and medicine. The emergence of
Biochemistry as a discipline is arguable and still remains
unclear, even at present. However, most scientists
believe that it started out from the ancient Greek who
dwelled on the structure, composition, and different
processes that occur within living organisms.
Both theory and techniques, chemistry was
wholly inadequate to unravel the mysteries of the
important functions in living systems.
This period marked the onset of physiological
chemistry, a sub-field of chemistry that dealt more with
extra cellular chemistry, such as the chemistry of
digestion and the body fluids.
History of Biochemistry
1665 – Micrographia book. Robert Hooke had
successfully invented the microscope. Because of this
discovery, Robert Hooke was the first one to have a
close look of a cell appears to be. His description of
these cells was published in Micrographia However, the
cell walls observed by Hooke gave no indication of the
nucleus and other organelles found in most living cells.
1674 – Anton van Leeuwenhoek witnessed a live cell
on a plant under microscope.
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1777-83 – Chemistry became dominated by the
phlogiston theory, or hypothetical principle of fire
wherein all the combustible material was part composed.
In this principle, burning (oxidation) was caused by
liberating phlogiston, with ash as the dephlogistigated
substance.
1836 – The proponent of the cel theory in Biology,
Theodore Schwann, proposed that the process of
fermentation is solely limited to living yeast cells in
1836. Liebig did not agree to this and instead, he
proposed another alternative theory of fermentation.
1856 – Louis Pasteur opposed Liebig’s chemical
theory. In his experiment, he showed that fermentation
depends highly on the physiological functions that occur
in bacteria and in living yeast cells. This work of
Pasteure in 1856 received general recognition.
1860s – The view on the chemistry of life highly
different from the chemistry of nonliving things. During
this period, the view is that the gelatinous and
homogenous form of matter in organisms or more
commonly known as the protoplasm carries out all the
intracellular processes. These include respiration,
biosynthesis of molecules, and the breakdown of matter.
1869 – Friedrich Miescher first identified what he
called “nuclein” inside the nuclei of human white blood
cells.
1900s – One of the most important events that
happened during this period is the experiment done by
Eduard Buchner. He prepared a cell-free extract of yeast
which he called the zymase. It fermented glucose and
produced carbon dioxide and ethanol. In this way,
Buncher then had introduced the concept of an
“enzyme”. This discovery of Buncher had debunked the
previous theory of protoplasm. Furthermore, the
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 Biochemistry
distinction between catalysis by hydrolytic extracellular
enzymes and by intracellular enzymes disappeared.
1904 – The term “Biochemistry was officially coined
by the German chemist Cart Neuber.
1919 – Phoebos Levene, a Russian physician and
chemist, first discovered the order of the three major
components of a single nucleotide (phosphate, pentose
sugar and nitrogenous base). He was also the first to
discover the carbohydrate component of DNA
(deoxyribose). Years later, Levene finally identified how
DNA and RNA molecules are put together.
1937 – Hans Krebs discovered the process of the Citric
Acid Cycle (Krebs Cycle) which a series of chemical
reactions that occur during cell respiration. Here, glucose
and oxygen get converted to water, carbon dioxide, and
energy. The advancement in the field of molecular
biology, a field of biology that focuses on the
physiological organization of living organisms in
molecular level, is indeed a great help in the progress of
biochemistry. Somehow, it is quite difficult to
distinguish between molecular biology and biochemistry
since both of them are concerned with the intermolecular
and intercellular transformations. it was then theorized
that proteins were composed of linear chains of amino
acids. This, however, happened even prior to
identification of amino acid constituents of amino acids.
1944 – While working on bacterial samples, Oswald
Avery first suggested that the genetic material of the cell
was possibly the deoxyribonucleic acid.
1950 - A scientist named Erwin Chargaff began to
challenge Levene’s previous conclusions. He noted that
the nucleotide composition of DNA differs among
species and do not repeat in the same order reached two
major conclusions. Chargaff concluded that almost all
DNA, no matter what organism or tissue type it comes
from, still maintains certain properties, even as its
composition varies. He postulated the “Chargaff’s Rule”
which says that the amount of cytosine is equal to the
amount of guanine, and the amount of thymine is equal
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Dr. Jeannette Fabian
to the amount of adenine. In short, the total amount of
pyrimidines (thymine and cytosine) approximates the
number of purines (adenine and guanine). Utilizing all
discoveries prior to James Watson and Francis Crick was
able to derive the three-dimensional and double-helical
model of the DNA in 1953. After that, the process of
replicating the DNA was suggested.
1958 – The theory was only confirmed after Frederick
Sanger discovered the first and complete protein
structure in 1958. The protein that was first identified is
insulin.
1961 – After the discovery of the genetic material, the
next achieved milestone was the cracking of the genetic
code. It was discovered in 1961 that the genetic code is
made up of specific triplets of DNA bases that encodes
for particular amino acids.
1977 – Sixteen years after the discovery of the triplets
of the DNA, Fred Sanger had successfully sequenced the
genome of a bacteriophage which contained more than
5000 nucleotides. Not long after, he was able to
sequence the DNA of the human mitochondrial genome
which consisted of more than 16 000 nucleotides. In the
present time, Biochemistry has promises to the world of
science in development of new path-breaking research
and coming times would surely prove these promises to
be fulfilled. The development of new technology such
as X-ray diffraction, chromatography, radioisotopic
labelling, electron microscopy and molecular
dynamics had paved the way for many other discoveries
in the field of Biochemistry. Such technologies will also
further open other new endeavors in the future.
SUMMARY
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