Molecular biology, is the branch of biology that deals with the molecular basis of biological activity. This field overlaps with other areas of biology and chemistry, particularly genetics and biochemistry.

Molecular biology chiefly concerns itself with understanding the interactions between the various systems of a cell, including the interactions between the different types of DNA, RNA and protein biosynthesis as well as learning how these interactions are regulated.

Writing in Nature in 1961, William Astbury described molecular biology

as:

"...not so much a technique as an approach, an approach from the

viewpoint of the so-called basic sciences with the leading idea of

searching below the large-scale manifestations of classical biology for

the corresponding molecular plan. It is concerned particularly with the

forms of biological molecules and [...] is predominantly

three-dimensional and structural—which does not mean, however, that it

is merely a refinement of morphology. It must at the same time inquire

into genesis and function."