Review paper on analyzing dose-response curves

I’ve been negligent about announcing new papers so I’ll do it all at once and then perhaps provide details later:

 Methods Enzymol. 2011;487:465-83.

Inferring mechanisms from dose-response curves.

Chow CC, Ong KM, Dougherty EJ, Simons SS Jr.

Laboratory of Biological Modeling, NIDDK/CEB, National Institutes of Health,
Bethesda, Maryland, USA.

The steady state dose-response curve of ligand-mediated gene induction usually
appears to precisely follow a first-order Hill equation (Hill coefficient equal
to 1). Additionally, various cofactors/reagents can affect both the potency and
the maximum activity of gene induction in a gene-specific manner. Recently, we
have developed a general theory for which an unspecified sequence of steps or
reactions yields a first-order Hill dose-response curve (FHDC) for plots of the
final product versus initial agonist concentration. The theory requires only that
individual reactions "dissociate" from the downstream reactions leading to the
final product, which implies that intermediate complexes are weakly bound or
exist only transiently. We show how the theory can be utilized to make
predictions of previously unidentified mechanisms and the site of action of
cofactors/reagents. The theory is general and can be applied to any biochemical
reaction that has a FHDC.

PMID: 21187235  [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]