FROM CRYSTALLOGRAPHY TO STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY, A CENTURY OF DISCOVERIES

From crystallography, the technique mostly used to study the structure of matter, the field mutated into structural biology, has mutated in life sciences into structural biology, which has been developed as an essential and rather successful area of research to fully understand the workings of cellular pathways. The application of physical approaches to biological systems has been crucial to comprehend the structure and function of the biological components of living organisms. In this assay the author walks the reader through the last century, which has witnessed how this life sciences research area was born and moved towards larger assemblies in the core of crucial biological problems. The influence of research in physics, biochemistry and molecular biology has been key in the successes and large body of seminal results obtained by structural biologists. The author proposes that the future of this area implies the integration of its results at the cellular level apart of using more quantitative approaches to describe biological processes.