Cell-based partitioning.

Partitioning techniques are widely used to classify compound sets or databases according to specific chemical or biological criteria. Partitioning is conceptually related to, yet algorithmically distinct from, conventional clustering methods and is particularly suitable for efficient processing of very large compound sets. Currently, some of the most popular partitioning approaches in the chemoinformatics field involve dimension reduction of initially defined chemistry spaces and creation of subsections of low-dimensional space for molecular classification. These subsections are often called cells. Original chemical reference spaces are generated through selection of various descriptors of molecular structure and properties. Principles and methodological aspects of dimension reduction of chemical spaces and compound partitioning in low-dimensional space are described herein.