What is Biochemistry, and how does it differ from the fields of Genetics, Biology, Chemistry and Molecular Biology?

Biochemistry is the study of the chemical structures and functions of the molecules of life, the vital processes occurring in living organisms and the roles of biomolecules in these processes.  Biochemistry provides a view of biomolecules at the chemical level and considers their chemical structure and behavior as determining their functions in life processes.  It is a scientific discipline largely concerned with metabolism: the catabolic processes employed to extract energy and the anabolic processes to build the vital molecules of life.  It is a discipline of biological and chemical sciences that intricately overlaps multiple scientific disciplines, including genetics, biology, chemistry and molecular biology.

Biochemistry is a branch of biology; the science that studies living organisms and vital processes; as it studies the very molecules of life.  However, it branches off from biology with its consideration of the chemistry of the molecules of life.  Biochemistry takes into account the chemical structure of biomolecules and considers the impact of this structure and chemical interactions in its study of their function and processes.  The physical science of chemistry focuses on the structure, properties and interactions of all particles of matter and the energy between them.  Thus, from this perspective, biochemistry is a discipline of chemistry also, differentiating from it by its roots in biology and its specific focus on biological matter and processes.

Genetics; the science of genes, heredity and variation in living organisms; is also very closely linked to biochemistry.  The structure and function of the biomolecules DNA and RNA are considered heavily in biochemistry, as they carry the code for construction of other biomolecules.  However, genetics takes a different path in its study, focusing mainly on the structure of the gene in the context of an organism, how that gene is expressed and ways in which its expression may be halted or altered.  This is a higher level view than the biochemistry platform, which studies these macromolecules and their structures for the purpose of understanding their function to the biological processes of an organism.  Biochemistry is more concerned with what proteins these molecules code for and create, the process by which they accomplish this, and what function these molecules serve in basic biological function.

The “lines” defining the different areas of biochemistry and molecular biology appear to be even more blurred as molecular biology also takes a close look at biological activity at the molecular level and studies the interactions of the systems of cellular function.  Like biochemistry, molecular biology considers the structure of the molecules of life and how they function in the biological processes that are necessary to life.  However, its focus gravitates more to the study of genetic origin, transcription of genetic material, and its translation to the molecules of life and their cellular functions, while biochemistry focuses more on nutrition, metabolism and biological functions at the molecular level.  Molecular biology has its roots firmly grounded in biochemistry and genetics and has rapidly become any area of great interest and study; one that is so vast that it has required a distinction from other disciplines as its own entity and area of study.

One must note that defining the differences between these disciplines may be essential to understanding their functions and purpose in the scientific world, however, each of these disciplines is interwoven with the next, each reaching for further understanding as it pulls knowledge and connection from the others.  In many ways, biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology have no concrete defined lines between them and overlap greatly.  Perhaps the best way to understand it is by the concept of perspective- genetics coming from the perspective of understanding the gene and its expression, biochemistry from the perspective of studying the structure of biomolecules and how this determines their function in biological processes and metabolic processes, and molecular biology from the perspective of studying the processes of transcription and translation of genetic material into proteins and the molecules of life.  Each perspective offers more discovery and, when taken together, a more complete understanding of the very structure and function of life.