  We develop a detailed theoretical investigation of the effect of Coulomb
interaction on electron transport in arrays of chaotic quantum dots and
diffusive metallic wires. Employing the real time path integral technique we
formulate a new Langevin-type of approach which exploits a direct relation
between shot noise and interaction effects in mesoscopic conductors. With the
aid of this approach we establish a general expression for the Fano factor of
1D quantum dot arrays and derive a complete formula for the interaction
correction to the current which embraces all perturbative results previously
obtained for various quasi-0D and quasi-1D disordered conductors and extends
these results to yet unexplored regimes.
