A review.The trend towards the application of highly integrated, interdisciplinary technologies to biol. problems in chem. biol. and biomedical science requires combinations of techniques and skill sets from chem., biophysics, structural, mol. and computational biol., and instrumentation development.This trend parallels increasing efforts towards a more global, information-driven, systems-oriented bioanal. approach to understand complex biol. systems at the mol. level.This issue of Current Opinion in Chem. Biol. contains a collection of reviews that cover recent advances in the development of novel anal. tools, reagents, instruments, and computation, with measurements ranging from those taken on single mols. to those taken on intact living tissue and whole organisms.