Prospects for drug screening using the reverse two-hybrid system

Rational drug-screening strategies have been limited by the number of avail able protein targets, The fields of genomics and functional genomics are no w merging into 'chemical genomics' approaches, in which large numbers of po tential target proteins can be used in standardized high-throughput drug-sc reening assays, Because protein-protein interactions are critical to most b iological processes and can be tested in standardized assays, they may repr esent optimal targets in the chemical-genomics era. The reverse two-hybrid system appears to have several properties that would be critical for the su ccess of this approach.