Overview of Ligand-Receptor Binding Techniques

The aim of this chapter is to give a general overview of techniques employed in the process of ligand-receptor binding. The theoretical aspects of the ligand-receptor interactions and mathematical aspects of binding are not detailed here. These are considered in Chapter 9 , and there are also very readable chapters in refs. 1 and 2 . The techniques referred to use radioligands in the study of the central nervous system, but many are applicable to work outside this field, for example, GABA binding in the periphery (3 ) as well as nonradioligands such as fluorescent and enzyme-linked antibodies.