Bioactive conformation, definition

Because these methods incorporate no knowledge of the struaure of the macromolecular binding site, any suggestions they make as to its nature are merely models that fit the structure-activity data. Because of the many assumptions involved in the alignment and choice of the bioactive conformation, as well as the necessarily limited information supplied by the structure—activity data, there is a high likelihood that the models will be incorrect in details. Proper use of the models is as hypotheses to guide further studies until more definitive information is available. In the discussion that follows, the methods are presented in the order of the date of their first use. 

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