Special Issue "Reagents and Methods for Protein Target Identification"
A special issue of Molecules (ISSN 1420-3049).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2013)
Dr. Nicholas James Westwood
School of Chemistry, University of St Andrews, North Haugh, St Andrews, KY16 9ST, UK
Interests: chemical biology; natural product synthesis
Two main factors are driving the resurgence in the use of protein target identification strategies. First, there is an increased interest in the identification of off-target effects of know drugs and second, improvements in phenotypic screening methods have led to a significant increase in the number of compounds that have been assigned as inducing an important biological phenotype through an unknown mechanism. In both cases, researchers at the chemistry-biology interface have been revisiting and in many cases inventing strategies to identify and subsequently validated protein targets. A number of target identification strategies use genomic and proteomic techniques. Typically these approaches, including the selection of resistant mutants followed by full genome sequencing, do not require the chemical synthesis of specific reagents. In other approaches, however, the preparation of specific reagents (radiolabeled, photoaffinity labelled, tagged etc) is essential. Structure activity relationship studies are also required to inform reagent synthesis programmes. Once the reagent has been prepared a range of methods for using it can then be envisaged. Overall, target identification is testing the creativity and skills of chemical biologists to the limit. In this special issue of Molecules, we aim to bring together papers that cover all aspects of the protein target identification challenge.
Dr. Nicholas James Westwood
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. Papers will be published continuously (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are refereed through a peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Molecules is an international peer-reviewed Open Access monthly journal published by MDPI.
- protein target identification
- reagent synthesis
- affinity chromatography
- photoaffinity labelling
- off target effects
- genome-wide approaches
- proteomic approaches
- chemical proteomics
- forward chemical genetics
- protein target validation