Chemicals Call Bacteria, and A New Membrane Protein Machine Answers

A major challenge in biology is the discovery of the processes controlled by the roughly one-third of genes with no known function. One approach being explored to address this problem is the use of small molecules in conjunction with genetics—chemical genetics. A short review of this field is provided as an introduction to a series of papers in this issue of Cell in which a new type of chemical genetics revealed the function of a new outer membrane protein complex in bacteria