“Chemical Biology” is a chemical research discipline at the interface between chemistry and biology utilizing chemical research methods to study the chemistry, biochemistry and molecular biology of biomolecules and biological processes. The recent attention assigned to chemical biology reflects the fact that pioneering research in the areas of biochemistry and molecular biology develops to be more and more of chemical nature as increasing insight into the exact molecular events in the biological processes is obtained. A mere description of these processes is no longer adequate - instead a detailed chemical understanding is needed leading to a deeper scientific understanding and thus to the possibility of designing improved drugs or biochemical/biotechnological tools. The discipline of chemical biology involves organic chemical synthesis, detailed studies on the structure of biomolecules, molecular modeling, and biological or chemical evaluation of natural compounds or analogues thereof.
Chemical Biology of Nucleic Acids concerns studies related to the DNA and RNA molecules used by nature for storage and replication of genetic information. During the last two decades, the automated synthesis of short DNA/RNA sequences (oligonucleotides) has been developed as have NMR spectroscopic and X-ray crystallographic methods needed for structural investigation. The basic chemical tools are therefore now available for a strong move forward in the research focused on the chemical biology of nucleic acids.
The five research groups constituting the research unit involved cover main areas of nucleic acid chemistry and chemical biology, i.e. synthetic nucleoside and nucleotide chemistry (Jesper Wengel, Poul Nielsen and Erik B. Pedersen), molecular modeling and biomolecular NMR (the NMR group), and RNA molecular biology (Stephen Douthwaite). Synthesis, structure elucidation, and biological/chemical investigation of a large number of nucleosides, intercalating monomers and DNA-analogues have been accomplished within the research unit.