Grand Challenges in Chemistry for 2016 and Beyond

Grand Challenges in Chemistry for 2016 and Beyond W hen several ACS Central Science Editors met for dinner at the 2015 Pacifichem meeting, conversation turned to the grand challenges facing science and society, and those we felt chemistry was in a unique position to solve.With the New Year, we thought we would share our ideas in our first editorial of 2016.The arenas in which we see chemistry having the largest influence are the molecular bases of disease and aging, alternative energy advancement, and the conservation of our elemental resources.The first challenge we identified is often hidden under the guise of an information problem.Routine access to genetic information is changing profoundly how we think about the molecular sciences and their role in society.Substantial information about one's own genome can be obtained in a few weeks for several hundred dollars, while whole-genome sequencing is available to anyone willing to spend a couple thousand.At the same time, powerful new methods of genome editing, still under active development, are raising important questions about what kinds of experiments should, should not, or "must" be done.Chemists have been central to these developments and will exploit genetic information in new and unexpected ways going forward.Links between genetic changes and their resultant human diseases increasingly will be understood in molecular terms, and new treatments and preventive strategies will emerge.New chemical tools will allow us to probe genome organization and gene regulation with greater specificity and resolution, and provide a basis for deeper understanding of evolution, the microbial world, developmental biology, neuroscience, and the mechanisms by which the immune system distinguishes self from non-self.Perhaps just as importantly, access to personal genetic information and open discussion of the ethical issues raised by personalized sequencing and genome editing technologies will provide new windows for nonscientists into the nature and value of the scientific enterprise.A corollary to chemistry's central role in leading us from genetic signatures to medicines will be its key to understanding what it means to be healthy across all ages something not predicated on genetics alone, as twin studies