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.