Discovery
Historically, receptors were discovered by using ligands to "fish" for their receptors. Hence by definition, these receptors were not orphans. However with modern molecular biology techniques such as screening of cDNA libraries, it becomes possible to identify related receptors based on sequence similarity to known receptors without knowing what their ligands are.
Read more about this topic: Orphan Receptor
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“Next to the striking of fire and the discovery of the wheel, the greatest triumph of what we call civilization was the domestication of the human male.”
—Max Lerner (b. 1902)
“One of the laudable by-products of the Freudian quackery is the discovery that lying, in most cases, is involuntary and inevitable—that the liar can no more avoid it than he can avoid blinking his eyes when a light flashes or jumping when a bomb goes off behind him.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)