<p>What’s the difference between the Chemical Biology track of the chemistry concentration and the Biochemistry concentration?</p>
<p>Methodological approach, although the courses can be made to look quite similar.</p>
<p>Biochem students do walk at the chemistry graduation ceremony, demonstrating how close they two are.</p>
<p>Essentially, chemical biologists are largely using organic chemistry techniques in exploring biological systems and understanding how biological systems work (mechanism, etc), whereas biochemists use techniques closer to biology to understand interactions of biomolecules on a more systems level, generally.</p>
<p>I’m not sure if that’s clear because there’s a fair amount of jargon there, but suffice to say you won’t have to make the choice between the two pretty much until your last second at Brown (except for the paper work) because the courses you map out on either path are going to be nearly identical for as much as three years of undergrad. You’d also choose different labs for your research based on which area your interest lies.</p>
<p>Biochem students actually walk EITHER BIO or CHEM depending on what their research is, I believe (if you do BIOL1950/1960 you walk with BIO, and if you do CHEM96/97 or whatever the research credit classes you do CHEM). Chem bio is also more chem heavy – you’re required to take p-chem or quantum basically whereas you don’t have to for biochem (biochem you need to do chem40 which is bioinorganic)</p>
<p>That’s not true wudanyan-- while you will register for a different research class often, it depends on which department you work in. Many biochem majors have worked with people in the Chem department like Suggs or Delaney or Cane and used CH96/97 for credit. </p>
<p>CH114, quantum, is basically the only course that would have to be different between the two tracks, provided you were doing a slightly chem heavy biochem track.</p>
<p>Either way, the difference is subtle and your choice will depend more on which methodology you’d like to use to tackle problems. Biochemists and chemical biologists are reading each others’ work all the time, and often they just use different experimental techniques which allow them to solve different aspects of the same problems.</p>