title: Cooperativity and biological complexity.
abstract: Cooperative binding effects pervade biology. Only a few basic principles are at play, but in different biological contexts cooperativity appears in distinct guises to achieve different ends. Here I discuss some of the manifestations of cooperativity that are most important in biology and drug discovery as they pertain to systems at different levels of complexity and also highlight aspects of this broadly important phenomenon that remain poorly understood.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Boston University, Metcalf Center for Science and Engineering, 590 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02215-2521, USA. whitty@bu.edu
authors.forename: Adrian
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Whitty
mesh_terms: D000494:Allosteric Regulation; D015195:Drug Design; D008024:Ligands; D046912:Multiprotein Complexes / Q000502:physiology*; D011485:Protein Binding; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism / Q000502:physiology*
chemical_list: D008024:Ligands; D046912:Multiprotein Complexes; D011506:Proteins