The Biological Signalling That Chemicals Can Do To The Cells In Our Body

What's the difference between a chemical and a biochemical?

A chemical is something that is made up of many different atoms. Everything that we see around us has a chemical formula. Everything that we come into contact with has a chemical formula. Everything that we eat also has a chemical formula.

We are all made up of many different atoms as well.

Some chemicals can be highly reactive. Metals can react with water, as can be seen in the video below:

We can see that there can be quite violent reactions between the metal and water, and for that reason we don’t really want to bring them close to each other. Because the violent reaction can be extremely dangerous.

We can see that violent reactions can occur between two (or more) inanimate chemicals. These chemicals have no life at all, but they are highly reactive when they are brought together. It all depends on how quickly the electrons are transferred between them.

Most of these reactions are also consistent. When sodium metal reacts with water, it will form sodium hydroxide and liberate hydrogen gas in the process. That doesn’t change. Electrons are transferred from the sodium metal to the water to liberate the hydrogen gas. That’s what always happens when we bring sodium metal into contact with water.

However, in the biochemical sense, there is a difference between biochemistry and chemistry, which comes about from the introduction of a live biological agent.

Adalimumab (or Humira), for instance, is a protein antibody that is produced from a recombinant Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell line. The cell is genetically modified to produce that specific protein while it is being cultivated and grown in a bioreactor - all from a common feed source such as glucose:

Glucose, therefore, undergoes a biochemical reaction within the CHO cells to trigger the synthesis of the protein.

The biochemical reaction that occurs is dependent on the type of cells involved. Different cells coming into contact with different chemicals will trigger different biochemical reactions.

It’s like how we as humans can have differing opinions about the same topic.

Let’s see a few examples to understand what’s happening in the biochemical sense just with two common health issues: heart disease and cancer.