Bioinformatics Institute, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore.
APD SKEG Pte Ltd, Singapore.
Biosci Rep. 2019 Jan 30;39(1). doi: 10.1042/BSR20181958. Print 2019 Jan 31.
The reductionist approach is prevalent in biomedical science. However, increasing evidence now shows that biological systems cannot be simply considered as the sum of its parts. With experimental, technological, and computational advances, we can now do more than view parts in isolation, thus we propose that an increasing holistic view (where a protein is investigated as much as a whole as possible) is now timely. To further advocate this, we review and discuss several studies and applications involving allostery, where distant protein regions can cross-talk to influence functionality. Therefore, we believe that an increasing big picture approach holds great promise, particularly in the areas of antibody engineering and drug discovery in rational drug design.
还原论方法在生物医学科学中很流行。然而，越来越多的证据表明，生物系统不能简单地被视为其各部分的总和。随着实验、技术和计算方面的进步，我们现在可以不仅仅孤立地观察部分，因此我们提出，现在适时地应该增加整体观点（尽可能全面地研究蛋白质）。为了进一步提倡这一点，我们回顾和讨论了几项涉及变构的研究和应用，其中远距离的蛋白质区域可以相互交流以影响功能。因此，我们相信，增加整体观点具有很大的潜力，特别是在抗体工程和合理药物设计中的药物发现领域。
