Biological Approaches

The concept of "judiciously exploiting biological approaches" is also a subject of debate ... 

Futai, M., Noumi, T, and Maeda, M., 1989. ATP. syndia.se Re.sults by combined biochemical and molecular biological approaches. Annual Review of Biochemistry 58 111 — 136. 

Colin, M.E. and Belzunces, L.P. (1992). Evidence of synergy between prochloraz and delta-methrin a convenient biological approach. Pesticide Science 36, 115-119. 

Bugrim A, Nikolskaya T, Nikolsky Y. Early prediction of drug metabolism and toxicity systems biology approach and modeling. Drug Discov Today 2004 9 127-35. 

It is clearly impossible to give a comprehensive overview of this rapidly expanding field. I have chosen a few experts in their field to discuss one (class of) transport protein(s) in detail. In the first five chapters pumps involved in primary active transport are discussed. These proteins use direct chemical energy, mostly ATP, to drive transport. The next three chapters describe carriers which either transport metabolites passively or by secondary active transport. In the last three chapters channels are described which allow selective passive transport of particular ions. The progress in the latter field would be unthinkable without the development of the patch clamp technique. The combination of this technique with molecular biological approaches has yielded very detailed information of the structure-function relationship of these channels. 

This approach is not restricted to bacterial or viral cells. Mammalian cells under highly proliferating conditions can be cultured at increasing exposure to a compound in attempts to create resistant mutants. Alternatively, one can sometimes use a structural biology approach to predict amino acid changes that would abrogate inhibitor affinity from study of enzyme-inhibitor complex crystal structures. If the recombinant mutant enzyme displays the diminished inhibitor potency expected, one can then devise ways of expressing the mutant enzyme in a cell type of interest and look to see if the cellular phenotype is likewise abolished by the mutation. 

R. J. Pieters, D. T. S. Rijkers, and R. M. J. Liskamp, Application of the 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition reaction in chemical biology Approaches toward multivalent carbohydrates and peptides and peptide-based polymers, QSAR Comb. Sci., 26 (2007) 1181-1190. 

Coffield, J. A., Bakry, N., Zhang, R. D., Carlson, J., Gomella, L. G. and Simpson, L. L. In vitro characterization of botuli-num toxin types A, C and D action on human tissues combined electrophysiologic, pharmacologic and molecular biologic approaches. J. Pharmacol. Exp. Ther. 280 1489-1498,1997. 

Leshem YY with the participation of Shewfelt RL, Willner CM, Pantoja O. Plant Membranes A Biological Approach to Structural Development and Science, Elsevier, New York, 1991. 

Charles F. Bodecker, "Pathology of Dental Caries, A Biological Approach," in ibid., p. 177. 

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