Biochemistry

Every living thing, from the simplest bacterium to human beings, is built from cells that share the same basic chemistry. That chemistry has to handle several jobs: letting cells sense and respond to their surroundings, supplying energy, carrying out the many processes inside the cell, providing a framework that holds everything together, and regulating it all through a network of linked chemical reactions. Biochemistry studies those reactions, the small molecules they create, use up and break down, and the large macromolecules, such as DNA, proteins, carbohydrates and the cytoskeleton, that act as both the machinery and the structures on which the reactions take place.

Understanding the chemistry of life quickly led people to try to alter it. Penicillin, obtained from mould, stops bacteria from building their cell walls. Aspirin, whose origins lie in willow bark, blocks enzymes that drive inflammation. Botulinum toxin, the substance behind botox, is so potent that a few nanograms can cause paralysis and death by stopping nerves from releasing neurotransmitters, yet in minute doses it can smooth out wrinkles on the forehead.

The book introduces the central ideas of the field, the scientists who shaped it and the molecules they investigated. It then turns to current research and innovations, including how biochemistry overlaps with biotechnology and synthetic biology. It is one of the Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press, a collection of hundreds of compact volumes covering nearly every subject, written by specialists who aim to make demanding topics clear to readers encountering them for the first time.