Patent ID: 7623969

Claim:
A method for assigning a cellular function to a component of a biochemical system, comprising: (a) physically perturbing a component of a network in a biochemical system; (b) measuring a data element for each of n components of said perturbed biochemical system, wherein n is three or more; (c) determining a multidimensional coordinate point in n-dimensional space representative of said data elements for each of said three or more measured components of said perturbed biochemical system, said multidimensional coordinate point comprising values for said data elements for each of said n measured components, wherein n corresponds to the number of measured biochemical components within said perturbed biochemical system; (d) comparing said multidimensional coordinate point to a reference data element region; (e) determining if said multidimensional coordinate point is within or outside said reference data element region, and (f) providing an output to a user of said determination in step (e), wherein a multidimensional coordinate point outside of said reference data element region indicates that said component is linked to said perturbed biochemical network, and is thereby assigned a cellular function of said network.