Chemistry & Biology Review Chemical Biology Strategies for Posttranslational Control of Protein Function Rishi Rakhit,1 Raul Navarro,1 and Thomas J. Wandless1,* 1Department of Chemical & Systems Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA *Correspondence:
[email protected] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chembiol.2014.08.011 A common strategy to understand a biological system is to selectively perturb it and observe its response. Although technologies now exist to manipulate cellular systems at the genetic and transcript level, the direct manipulation of functions at the protein level can offer significant advantages in precision, speed, and revers- ibility. Combining the specificity of genetic manipulation and the spatiotemporal resolution of light- and small molecule-based approaches now allows exquisite control over biological systems to subtly perturb a system of interest in vitro and in vivo. Conditional perturbation mechanisms may be broadly characterized by change in intracellular localization, intramolecular activation, or degradation of a protein-of-interest. Here we review recent advances in technologies for conditional regulation of protein function and suggest further areas of potential development. Mechanistic understanding of cell biology and physiology is on the functional molecule. Directly targeting proteins via small- driven in part by the tools available to manipulate the system molecule inhibitors or activators is fast, conditional, and simple and to assay the phenotypic response. The study of a particular if a perturbant is available but may be limited by specificity and process requires specialized approaches to enable dissection of exhibit off-target effects (Fabian et al., 2005; Lounkine et al., components, connectivity, and, ultimately, causation. A wide 2012).