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pterodactyl commented on the word combinatorial explosion
A phrase I picked up in college. It refers to a situation in which the number of elements is small, but the number of combinations of these elements is unmanageably vast.
December 2, 2008
sionnach commented on the word combinatorial explosion
Isn't this what we have to thank for our ability to form potentially gazillions of antibodies?
Also, one popular approach to discovering promising lead compounds during drug development is to synthesize a so-called combinatorial library of compounds from some fairly basic components, then run the compounds thus synthesized through a battery of automated activity and toxicity tests. The combinatorial libraries can get very big very fast.
December 2, 2008