Binding Specificity and Causal Selection in Drug Design

Abstract

Binding specificity is a centrally important concept in molecular biology, yet it has received little philosophical attention. Here I aim to remedy this by analyzing binding specificity as a causal property. I focus on the concept's role in drug design, where it is highly prized and hence directly studied: From a causal perspective, understanding why binding specificity is a valuable property of drugs contributes to an understanding of causal selection ーof how and why scientists distinguish between causes, not just causes from non-causes. In particular, the specificity of drugs is precisely what underwrites their value as experimental interventions on biological processes.

Philosophy of Developmental Biology

“…More recently, philosophers of science have started to resist Millean parity in the context of scientific explanations (Baxter, 2019;Franklin-Hall, 2015;Lean, 2019;Plutynski, 2018;Ross, 2018;Waters, 2007;Weber, forthcoming-a;Woodward, 2010). The starting point for such attempts is the realization that not all causal relationships are alike; they may differ in various respects.…”

Measuring Causal Invariance Formally

“…Moving now to discrete and continuous quantitative variables that have the same properties as ordinal variables and, furthermore, on which arithmetic operations can be performed, the very same limitations to measure Woodward-invariance using Equation (9) or Equation (13) will apply. The only difference between strictly ordinal and quantitative variables is that in the case of quantitative variables the relationship between C and E can be represented using the values of the two variables directly, rather than their ranks (we have more quantifiable semantic information than in the case of ordinal variables).…”

“…Combining Equations ( 7) and ( 8), we get Equation (9).…”

“…The binding specificity of the first enzyme, which is an example of one-to-one specificity, is higher than the specificity of the second enzyme. For more on the distinction between the two types of specificity see Bourrat [1], Woodward [3], and Lean [9].…”

“…Woodward's framework can be deployed in many different contexts. For instance, it has been applied in the context of genetic causation (e.g., [1,5,8,11,12]), developmental biology (e.g., [13,14]), heritability (e.g., [10,15,16]), microbiome research (e.g., [17]), drug design (e.g., [9]), epidemiology (more particularly as a way to understand Koch's postulates) (e.g., [18]), and so forth.…”