Molecular biology explores cells, their characteristics, parts, and chemical processes, and pays special attention to how molecules control a cell’s activities and growth. Looking at the molecular machinery of life began in the early 1930s, but truly modern molecular biology emerged with the uncovering of the structure of DNA in the 1960s. As a science that studies interactions between the molecular components that carry out the various biological processes in living cells, an important idea in molecular biology states that information flow in organisms follows a one-way street: Genes are transcribed into RNA, and RNA is translated into proteins.

The molecular components make up biochemical pathways that provide the cells with energy, facilitate processing “messages” from outside the cell itself, generate new proteins, and replicate the cellular DNA genome. For example, molecular biologists study how proteins interact with RNA during “translation” (the biosynthesis of new proteins), the molecular mechanism behind DNA replication, and how genes are turned on and off, a process called “transcription.”

The birth and development of molecular biology was driven by the collaborative efforts of physicists, chemists and biologists. As mentioned, modern molecular biology emerged with the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. The 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to Francis H. Crick, James D. Watson, and Maurice H. F. Wilkins “for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material.”

Advances and discoveries in molecular biology continue to make major contributions to medical research and drug development.