Chemical biology at UCI focuses on understanding and manipulating the complicated chemical structures, reactions, and interactions of biology. Research projects include developing new spectroscopic methods for elucidating the structures of biomolecules, engineering and expressing novel proteins, mimicking biomaterials, studying electron transfer processes in proteins, using X-ray crystallography, NMR spectroscopy, optical microscopy and computer simulations to gain insight into biomolecules and biomolecular assemblies, inventing new chemical probes to address biomolecular interactions, controlling protein interactions and bioactivities, synthesizing biologically active compounds, and understanding the chemical basis for diseases.