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Affinity Media:  substrate used for the capture of proteins through specific binding interactions

Amino acids:  the natural building blocks of proteins

ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate):  molecule that is the main energy carrier inside cells.  Its terminal (or end) phosphate groups are highly reactive and critical to a number of important cellular processes

Bioinformatics: use of computers in the acquisition and analysis of information relating to genes, proteins (and their structures), biological pathways and drugs 

Chemical Scaffold:  common structural subunit of a given family of molecules

Chemoproteomics: drug discovery technology that evaluates the global interactions of small drug-like molecules with all proteins in a proteome or sub-proteome as a means to identify new protein targets and to elucidate protein function, biochemical pathways, and protein reaction partners

Differential Expression:  variation in the amount of a given protein that is present in distinct (or distinctly treated) cells or tissues

Drug Target: protein that is responsible for the manifestation of a therapeutically relevant disease or a toxic side effect

Enzyme:  protein catalyst of a chemical reaction

Functional Proteome Fractionation (FPF):  Serenex’s proprietary technology that uses naturally occurring ligands to capture, purify and concentrate diverse biologically active proteome fractions which are rich in potential therapeutic targets

Functional Proteomics:  comprehensive study of proteins and their biological functions and interactions

Gel Electrophoresis:  utilization of a gel matrix and an applied electric field to separate proteins or other molecules by size

Gene:   fundamental unit of heredity, usually leading to the production of a single protein

Genome:   entire complement of genetic information contained in a given cell or organism

Genomics:  the comprehensive study of the genetic information of a cell or organism 

Hit:  chemical molecule that is capable of interacting with a pharmocologically relevant protein

Inhibitor:  chemical molecule that is capable of interfering with the function of a given protein

K_i:  inhibition constant, which is a value describing the strength of the interaction of an inhibitor molecule with the protein that it inhibits

Kinase:  enzyme that catalyzes the transfer of a phosphate group from ATP to an acceptor, often thereby altering the biological activity of the acceptor in the process

Lead :  chemical molecule having a desired pharmacological effect

Ligand:  molecule that binds to a specific site on a protein

Mass Spectrometry:  utilization of a mass spectrometer to, in our case, analyze masses of an unknown peptide or protein to aid in their subsequent identification

Metabolism:   entire collection of chemical reactions in a living cell or organism

Molecule:  group of atoms that are covalently bound to create a chemical structure

Peptide:  combination of two or more amino acids; a fragment of a protein

Protein:  molecule composed of amino acids arranged in a specific sequence determined by a corresponding gene.  Proteins are the molecular workhorse of the cell and are thereby required for the structure, function and regulation of cells, tissues and organs

Protein Sequencing:  determination of the identity and order of the amino acids present in a protein of interest

Proteome:  entire protein complement of a given genome

Proteome Mining:  Serenex’s proprietary technology that allows for simultaneous identification of therapeutic targets and potential therapeutic compounds that inhibit the activity of these targets

Proteomics:  comprehensive study of the proteins of a cell or organism

Purine-binding Proteome:  subset of the proteins of a given proteome that bind to purine cofactors such as ATP or NADH

Purine Cofactor:  certain chemical molecules that have nitrogen-containing ring structures and are critical to cellular function

SAR (Structure-Activity Relationship):  association between the chemical composition of a molecule and its biological effect

Selectivity: relative description of the number of proteins with which a drug molecule interacts

Sub-proteome: subset of the proteins of a given proteome, which usually have some sort of commonality (e.g. the proteins could all share an affinity for a common ligand such as ATP)

Therapeutic: desired pharmaceutical effect

Toxicity: manifestation of undesired pharmacology