Biomolecular Structure and Modeling: Historical Perspective

Abstract

The exciting field of modeling molecular systems by computer has been steadily drawing increasing attention from scientists in varied disciplines. In particular, modeling large biological polymers — proteins, nucleic acids, and lipids — is a truly multidisciplinary enterprise. Biologists describe the cellular picture; chemists fill in the atomic and molecular details; physicists extend these views to the electronic level and the underlying forces; mathematicians analyze and formulate appropriate numerical models and algorithms; and computer scientists and engineers provide the crucial implementational support for running large computer programs on high-speed and extended-communication platforms. The many names for the field (and related disciplines) underscore its cross-disciplinary nature: computational biology, computational chemistry, in silico biology, computational structural biology, computational biophysics, theoretical biophysics, theoretical chemistry, and the list goes on.

... physics, chemistry, and biology have been connected by a web of causal explanation organized by induction-based theories that telescope into one another. ... Thus, quantum theory underlies atomic physics, which is the foundation of reagent chemistry and its specialized offshoot biochemistry, which interlock with molecular biology — essentially, the chemistry of organic macromolecules — and hence, through successively higher levels of organization, cellular, organismic, and evolutionary biology. ... Such is the unifying and highly productive understanding of the world that has evolved in the natural sciences.

Edward O. Wilson: “Resuming the Enlightenment Quest”, in The Wilson Quarterly, Winter 1998.