What is meant by research chemical

Publisher Summary Chemical studies have an increasingly important place in biological research, and in the boundary between chemical and biological research: chemical and biological laboratories are more and more permeable. There are two ways to interpret these observations. The first was proposed by Ernst Mayr in 1961. He distinguished two categories of researchers within biology, who address different questions. Functional biologists look for physical and chemical mechanisms explaining how the complex macromolecular devices present in organisms fulfill their functions. Evolutionary biologists try to understand why such molecular devices were retained by the action of natural selection. The central place of chemistry in functional biology was acknowledged by Ernst Mayr, but it did not bother him: he thought that functional biology would progressively dissolve into physics and chemistry. This chapter considers that functional biology is as much a part of biology as evolutionary biology, and not directly reducible to physics and chemistry. It argues that biological chemistry is a specific form of chemistry, and that chemical explanations in biology have specific characteristics. The chapter also argues that chemical explanations in biology are chemical explanations of biological phenomena. Finally, work on the origin of life is considered as a good example of these complex relations between chemical and biological explanations.