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Chemical informatics and target identification in a zebrafish phenotypic screen

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Abstract

Target identification is a core challenge in chemical genetics. Here we use chemical similarity to computationally predict the targets of 586 compounds that were active in a zebrafish behavioral assay. Among 20 predictions tested, 11 compounds had activities ranging from 1 nM to 10,000 nM on the predicted targets. The roles of two of these targets were tested in the original zebrafish phenotype. Prediction of targets from chemotype is rapid and may be generally applicable.

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Figure 1: Compounds for which at least one target is predicted.
Figure 2: Testing target relevance by phenocopy and functional competition.

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Acknowledgements

We thank S. Morris for help with Cytoscape. This work was supported by US National Institutes of Health grants GM71896 (to J.J.I. and B.K.S.), AG02132 (to S. Prusiner and B.K.S.), MH085205 and MH086867 (to R.P.), MH091449 (to D.K.), R01 MH093603 and R01 NS49272 (to D.L.M.); a Rogers Family Foundation award (to M.J.K.); the National Institutes of Mental Health Psychoactive Drug Screening Program, grant U19MH82441; the Michael Hooker Chair (to B.L.R.); and fellowships from the Max Kade Foundation (to C.L.) and the European Molecular Biology Organization (to A.T.).

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Author notes

  1. Christian Laggner, David Kokel and Vincent Setola: These authors contributed equally to this work.

  2. shoichet@cgl.ucsf.edu

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, University of California, San Francisco, California, USA

    Christian Laggner, Henry Lin, John J Irwin, Michael J Keiser & Brian K Shoichet

  2. Cardiovascular Research Center and Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, Massachusetts, USA

    David Kokel, Chung Yan J Cheung & Randall T Peterson

  3. Broad Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

    David Kokel, Chung Yan J Cheung & Randall T Peterson

  4. Department of Pharmacology, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA

    Vincent Setola & Bryan L Roth

  5. National Institute of Mental Health Psychoactive Drug Screening Program, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA

    Vincent Setola & Bryan L Roth

  6. Cardiovascular Research Institute, University of California, San Francisco, California, USA

    Alexandra Tolia & Daniel L Minor Jr

  7. Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California, San Francisco, California, USA

    Alexandra Tolia & Daniel L Minor Jr

Authors
  1. Christian Laggner
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  2. David Kokel
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  3. Vincent Setola
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  4. Alexandra Tolia
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  5. Henry Lin
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  6. John J Irwin
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  7. Michael J Keiser
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  8. Chung Yan J Cheung
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  9. Daniel L Minor Jr
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  10. Bryan L Roth
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  11. Randall T Peterson
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  12. Brian K Shoichet
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Contributions

The strategy was devised by B.K.S. and R.T.P., the PMR assay by D.K., and target predictions and other calculations by C.L., with assistance and editing by J.J.I., M.J.K., H.L. and B.K.S. Electrophysiology was designed by D.L.M. and implemented by A.T., and GPCR and kinase experiments were designed and implemented by B.L.R. and V.S., who also advised on target-phenotype associations. Zebrafish pharmacology was conducted by D.K. with assistance by C.Y.J.C.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Bryan L Roth, Randall T Peterson or Brian K Shoichet.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Supplementary Methods and Supplementary Results (PDF 4982 kb)

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Laggner, C., Kokel, D., Setola, V. et al. Chemical informatics and target identification in a zebrafish phenotypic screen. Nat Chem Biol 8, 144–146 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchembio.732

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nchembio.732

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