Numerous illnesses are disturbances of metabolism, and many drugs act by altering metabolism.
The implied assumption is that once an enzyme inhibitor has been identified and a means found for delivering it to its target, the metabolic consequences are so obvious that they do not need to be thought about in advance. An uncritical assault on the thousands of new targets revealed by the Human Genome Project might prove to be just trial and error in new clothes. Marseille Cedex 20, France. R. Eisenthal and A. Cornish-Bowden, J. Biol. What is often called target validation must eventually include this type of analysis.