What do biochemists do?
Support our understanding of health and disease
Contribute innovative information to the technology revolution
Work alongside chemists, physicists, healthcare professionals, policy makers, engineers and many more professionals
Biochemists work in many places, including:
Agriculture
Food institutes
Education
Cosmetics
Drug discovery and development
Biochemists have many transferable skills, including:
Analytical
Communication
Research
Problem solving
Numerical
Written
Observational
Planning
The life science community is a fast-paced, interactive network with global career opportunities at all levels. The Government recognizes the potential that developments in biochemistry and the life sciences have for contributing to national prosperity and for improving the quality of life of the population. Funding for research in these areas has been increasing dramatically in most countries, and the biotechnology industry is expanding rapidly.
At its broadest definition, biochemistry can be seen as a study of the components and composition of living things and how they come together to become life, and the history of biochemistry may therefore go back as far as the ancient Greeks.[10] However, biochemistry as a specific scientific discipline has its beginning some time in the 19th century, or a little earlier, depending on which aspect of biochemistry one is being focused on. Some argued that the beginning of biochemistry may have been the discovery of the first enzyme, diastase (today called amylase), in 1833 byAnselme Payen,[11] while others considered Eduard Buchner's
first demonstration of a complex biochemical process alcoholic fermentation in cell-free extracts in 1897 to be the birth of biochemistry.[12][13] Some might also point as
its beginning to the influential 1842 work by Justus von Liebig,Animal chemistry, or, Organic chemistry in its applications to physiology and pathology, which presented a
chemical theory of metabolism,[10] or even earlier to the 18th century studies on fermentation and respiration by Antoine Lavoisier.[14][15] Many other pioneers in the
field who helped to uncover the layers of complexity of biochemistry have been
proclaimed founders of modern biochemistry, for example Emil Fischer for his work on the chemistry of proteins,[16] and F. Gowland Hopkins on enzymes and the
dynamic nature of biochemistry.[17]
The term "biochemistry" itself is derived from a combination of biology and chemistry. In 1877, Felix Hoppe-Seyler used the term (biochemie in German) as a synonym for physiological chemistry in the foreword to the first issue of Zeitschrift
für Physiologische Chemie (Journal of Physiological Chemistry) where he argued for the setting up of institutes dedicated to this field of study.[18][19] The German chemist Carl Neuberghowever is often cited to have been coined the word in 1903,[20][21][22] while some credited it to Franz Hofmeister.[23]
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