Biological redundancy

Thompson, G. L., Canals, M., Poole, D. P. (2014). Biological redundancy of endogenous GPCR ligands in the gut and the potential for endogenous functional selectivity. Frontiers in Pharmacology, 5, 262. 

One approach is to extend the columns of a measurement table by means of their powers and cross-products. An example of such non-linear PCA is discussed in Section 37.2.1 in an application of QSAR, where biological activity was known to be related to the hydrophobic constant by means of a quadratic function. In this case it made sense to add the square of a particular column to the original measurement table. This procedure, however, tends to increase the redundancy in the data. 

Many cytokines exhibit redundancy, i.e. two or more cytokines can induce a similar biological effect. Examples include TNF-a and -P, both of which bind to the same receptor and induce very similar, if not identical, biological responses. This is also true of the IFN-a family proteins and IFN-P, all of which bind the same receptor. 

A. The filter system shall include a- series redundant-parallel Chemical Biological Radiological (CBR) filter assembly with a capability of placing a detector between the adsorber banks to warn of "breakthrough". The system shall provide accessibility to filters for repairs, maintenance and leak testing. 

It is noteworthy that redundancy within and among collections meant that classes of compounds, rather than discrete compounds, emerged from the screen, indicating that compounds with the desired biological activity shared a similar structure. In one instance, the same class of compounds was discovered in two different collections. 

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