molecular biology, scientific study of the molecular basis of life processes, including cellular respiration, excretion, and reproduction. The term molecular biology was coined in 1938 by Warren Weaver, then director of the natural sciences program at the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1950 W. T. Astbury of the Univ. of Leeds used the term in its now accepted sense, to describe the area of research, closely related to and often overlapping biochemistry, conducted by biologists whose approach to and interest in biology are principally at the molecular level of organization. The field of molecular biology has grown with the increasing sophistication of available techniques and has quickly built upon its own increases in the understanding of biological processes. In the 1930s, with the help of the technique of ultracentrifugation, the macromolecules macromolecule, term that may refer either to a crystal such as a diamond, in which the atoms are identical and held by covalent bonds (see chemical bond ) of equal strength, or to one of the units that compose a polymer .
..... Click the link for more information. were first studied in detail and their crystalline properties described. In the 1940s the process by which individual genes produce their unique products began to be understood as resulting from the different sequences of the base pairs that make up the genes. In the 1950s Linus Pauling Pauling, Linus Carl (pô`lĭng), 1901–94, American chemist, b. Portland, Oreg.
..... Click the link for more information. described the three-dimensional structure of proteins, and James Watson Watson, James Dewey, 1928–, American biologist and educator, b. Chicago, Ill., grad. Univ. of Chicago, 1947, Ph.D. Univ. of Indiana, 1950. With F. H. C.
..... Click the link for more information. and Francis Crick Crick, Francis Harry Compton, 1916–2004, English scientist, grad. University College, London, and Caius College, Cambridge. Crick was trained as a physicist, and from 1940 to 1947 he served as a scientist in the admiralty, where he designed circuitry for naval
..... Click the link for more information. described the double helix of the DNA molecule. Further advances were made in understanding DNA, protein, and virus synthesis and the regulation of genes, and by the 1970s, the techniques of genetic engineering genetic engineering, the use of various methods to manipulate the DNA (genetic material) of cells to change hereditary traits or produce biological products.
..... Click the link for more information. were enabling molecular biologists to study higher plants and animals, opening up the possibility of manipulating plant and animal genes to achieve greater agricultural productivity. Such techniques also opened the way for the development of gene therapy gene therapy, the use of genes and the techniques of genetic engineering in the treatment of a genetic disorder or chronic disease. There are many techniques of gene therapy, all of them still in experimental stages.
..... Click the link for more information. .

Bibliography

See A. Darbre, Introduction to Practical Molecular Biology (1988).

molecular biology

Field of science concerned with the chemical structures and processes of biological phenomena at the molecular level. Having developed out of the related fields of biochemistry, genetics, and biophysics, the discipline is particularly concerned with the study of proteins, nucleic acids, and enzymes. In the early 1950s, growing knowledge of the structure of proteins enabled the structure of DNA to be described. The discovery in the 1970s of certain types of enzymes that can cut and recombine segments of DNA (see recombination) in the chromosomes of certain bacteria made recombinant-DNA technology possible. Molecular biologists use that technology to isolate and modify specific genes (see genetic engineering).