Screening small molecules for their ability to perturb a cellular pathway, a strategy called forward chemical genetics, can yield unexpected information about other pathway components. This is well illustrated by new work (Jiang et al .), as Nicholson and Thornberry discuss in their Perspective. Discovery of a small-molecule activator of apoptosis implicated a tumor suppressor protein and an oncoprotein in the regulation of the mitochondrial cell death pathway.
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Nicholson et al. (2003) studied this question.
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