Chemical informatics and target identification in a zebrafish phenotypic screen

Target identification is a core challenge in chemical genetics. Here we use chemical similarity to predict computationally the targets of 586 compounds active in a zebrafish behavioral assay. Of 20 predictions tested, 11 had activities ranging from 1 to 10,000nM on the predicted targets. The role of two of these targets was tested in the original zebrafish phenotype. Prediction of targets from chemotype is rapid and may be generally applicable