inhibitor target a pathway - (Dec/22/2010 )

Hi,

That's say if I found an inhibitor to a pathway. Among many points in the pathway, how can I find out that which point the inhibitor targets. Can I perform a gel shift assay?

What sort of inhibition? DNA? RNA? protein? each has their own method of detecting interaction.

bob1 on Wed Dec 22 20:58:47 2010 said:

You can try to rescue the effect you get from the inhibitor. For instance, suppose you have an inhibitor acting on the Wnt signaling pathway. If overexpressed beta-catenin rescues the phenotype of the inhibitor, you know the inhibitor is acting upstream of the activation of b-ctn, for instance at the binding of the Wnt ligand to the receptor. A lot of pathways can be activated by different exogenous stimuli, so you'll have to read about your pathway and find some steps where you can intervene ...