The invention provides a method for assigning a cellular function to a
component of a biochemical system. The method involves (a) determining a
multidimensional shape space for one or more components of a biochemical
system in a reference state; (b) perturbing a component within said
biochemical system; (c) determining a perturbed multidimensional shape
space for one or more components of a pathway in said perturbed
biochemical system, and (d) identifying a multidimensional coordinate
point corresponding to a component of said perturbed pathway altered
between reference and perturbed multidimensional shape spaces, said
identified component being assigned a cellular function of said perturbed
pathway.