Can someone provide some sort of overview as to how these sort of pathways, or on a even more detailed level, specific protein receptors for certain diseases, are identified?
Identifying these pathways would probably be by genetic sequencing, protein folding/behaviour analysis and extensive in-test-tube experimentation with living cell cultures.. but I'm not in the field so I don't really know. Maybe there's a voktage-gradient-memory-based (see Michael Levin's work) way to detect this type of misbehavior too? That'd be really cool!