ABSTRACT
Chemical principles and transformations are crucial for an understanding of life. The inside of cells contains a densely crowded, complex mixture of biomolecules and inorganic solutes with diverse functions that interact and participate in chemical reactions. For example, enzymes catalyze a multitude of reactions that underlie the metabolism of a cell, allowing it to utilize and convert energy from its environment, to produce biomass, and to synthesize the molecules necessary to grow and divide. Chemical catalysts, such as metals, are considered to have played a central role in the transition between abiotic and biotic systems. Still today, metals in enzymes are central to much (but not all) of the biochemistry that takes place within cells and enable the very existence of organisms. The remarkable catalytic properties of enzymes, which we will discuss in Chapter 5, are not achieved by mechanisms specific to biology but are based on fundamental chemical reactivities. Besides being important for enzymatic reactions, chemical principles also allow cells to form complex, ordered structures, for example, for information storage in the case of DNA or to build cytoplasmic membranes that shield the cellular interior, among many other functions. Chemical principles were responsible for the emergence of the first organisms and enable powerful applications today. In biotechnology and synthetic biology, an understanding of cellular chemistry allows humans to equip organisms with new abilities like generating biofuel from carbon dioxide or digesting plastic waste. Thus, let us have a closer look at how biology is based on chemistry.
