Chemical biology is emerging as a new means to obtain powerful tools to study complex biological systems. It includes a family of methods that utilize small organic molecules to alter the function of proteins directly rather than indirectly via gene mutations. These are powerful methods that allow the fine dissection of complex biological processes, such as microbial virulence, by identifying proteins, enzymes and receptors required for these processes. The theme of UCMR research is to combine chemical biology with our strong molecular biology program to solve modern day problems of microbial disease.
To sustain our vision in the future, the UCMR Research School will now begin training PhD students to work within a chemical biology curriculum. This program will offer new possibilities to stimulate graduate student training at the interface between biology-biomedicine-chemistry-physics. We anticipate that additional applications for small organic chemical molecules to study biological processes outside of microbial virulence will be included. This planned broadening of our program will lead to the development of a new curriculum for graduate studies within chemical biology.