Abstract
In vitro selection of nucleic acids has typically been used for the generation of high molecular weight inhibitors of enzymes. However, this technique can also be used for more conventional drug design in several different ways. First, the binding sites of regulatory proteins on DNA or RNA can be precisely delimited using in vitro selection. Second, “artificial” phylogenices generated by this technique can be used to model the three‐dimensional structure of nucleic acids. And, finally, the technique can be used to screen large chemical libraries for new lexitropsins, compounds that can specifically recognize nucleic acid sequence or structure. © 1994 Wiley‐Less, Inc.