Target identification of bioactive compounds.

To fully understand the regulation of cellular events, functional analysis of each protein involved in the regulatory systems is required. Among a variety of methods to uncover protein function, chemical genetics is a remarkable approach in which small molecular compounds are used as probes to elucidate protein functions within signaling pathways. However, identifying the target of small molecular bioactive compounds isolated by cell-based assays represents a crucial hurdle that must be overcome before chemical genetic studies can commence. A variety of methods and technologies for identifying target proteins have been reported. This review therefore aims to describe approaches for identifying these molecular targets. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.