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The ability to alter cell identity with small molecules represents a powerful approach to restore biological function lost because of cellular deficiency. Developing this capability through advances in chemical biology could have an enormous impact on human health.
Post-transcriptional RNA modifications can be dynamic and might have functions beyond fine-tuning the structure and function of RNA. Understanding these RNA modification pathways and their functions may allow researchers to identify new layers of gene regulation at the RNA level.
Hyper-performing whole-cell catalysts are required for the renewable and sustainable production of petrochemical replacements. Chassis cells—self-replicating minimal machines that can be tailored for the production of specific chemicals—will provide the starting point for designing these hyper-performing 'turbo cells'.
Some of the most celebrated triumphs of chemical biology are molecularly targeted therapeutics to combat human disease. However, a grand challenge looms as informative diagnostic strategies must be developed to realize the full impact of these promising pharmaceutical agents.
In the postsequencing era, chemical biology is uniquely situated to investigate genomic DNA alterations arising through epigenetic modifications, genetic rearrangements or active mutation. These transformations significantly expand nature's diversity and may profoundly alter our view of DNA's coding potential.
Chemical biology is now able to discover molecules that manipulate virtually any biological target or process. It remains a grand challenge to leverage these molecules into useful probes that can be used to address unsolved problems in biology.
Rationally designing new strategies to control the human immune response stands as a key challenge for the scientific community. Chemical biologists have the opportunity to address specific issues in this area that have important implications for both basic science and clinical medicine.
The synthesis and biological annotation of small molecules from underexplored chemical space will play a central role in the development of drugs for challenging targets currently being identified in frontier areas of biological research such as human genetics.
Variations between single members of a bacterial population can lead to antibiotic resistance that is not gene based. The future of effective infectious disease management might depend on a better understanding of this phenomenon and the potential to manipulate both it and microbial population dynamics in general.
Engineering biosynthetic pathways to natural products is a challenging endeavor that promises to provide new therapeutics and tools to manipulate biology. Information-guided design strategies and tools could unlock the creativity of a wide spectrum of scientists and engineers by decoupling expertise from implementation.
The capability to generate multi-omic data sets raises the issue of resource allocation for data generation versus data curation and integration. The initial experience of researchers shows that the effort required for the latter can be much greater than that for the former.
