The familiar picture of signal transduction cascades in which amplification is obtained by sequential phosphorylation/activation has been augmented by the discovery of multi-component signalling complexes that may include receptors, kinases, scaffolds and adaptors, and non-kinase signal generators [ 1– 4].
The principal idea behind announcing the Discovery Notes section of Biology Direct is to augment the process of discovery in light of the unprecedented accumulation of biological data.
Although computational docking of ligands to targets has been used to augment the empirical discovery process, its historical effectiveness has been limited because of the poor correlation of ligand dock scores and experimentally determined binding constants.
However, in a report prepared for one of these 21st century skill projects, Scardamalia et al. ([2012]) argued that in a project with such forward-looking aspirations the traditional working-backward-from-goals approach ought to be augmented by provisions for the discovery of new needed competencies, rather than supposing that these can all be identified in advance.
The discovery of RNAi has augmented our understanding of small (∼ 20 30 nt) noncoding RNAs as critical regulators of gene expression and genome stability, and the RNAi also presents a fascinating technology with great potential for application in gene function dissection, disease therapy, plant protection, and nutritional improvement, as well as many other areas.
The improved knowledge of healing, along with recent advances in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, has resulted in the discovery of novel biologically augmented ACL-repair techniques that have satisfactory outcomes in preclinical studies.
This makes the discovery of new treatments that can augment existing ones even more urgent.
