title: Constitutively active receptors as a disease-causing mechanism.
abstract: Membrane receptors have appeared early in evolution as the means for the unicellular organism to sense its environment. With the emergence of social cellular life in multicellular organisms, membrane receptors have acquired the additional functions of sensing the presence of similar cells (as in the aggregation phenomenon of Dictyostelium discoideum) (Klein et al., 1988) or the presence of the mate (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) (Cross et al., 1988), and to detect endocrine signals emitted by cells in distant tissues. As the latter function is central to homeostasis and regulation of cell growth, the downstream regulatory cascades under receptor control are the subject of intense research with implications in virtually all fields of biomedical science. The impact of the analysis of tyrosine kinase-activated cascades on our understanding of carcinogenesis is but one example of such an advance.
authors.affiliation: Institut de Recherche Interdisciplinaire, Faculty of Medicine, University of Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Parma
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Duprez
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Van Sande
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Paschke
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tonacchera
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Dumont
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Vassart
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004194:Disease / Q000209:etiology*; D019204:GTP-Binding Proteins / Q000502:physiology; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D006801:Humans; D051379:Mice; D008954:Models, Biological; D008958:Models, Molecular; D009154:Mutation; D011956:Receptors, Cell Surface / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology*; D015398:Signal Transduction
chemical_list: D011956:Receptors, Cell Surface; D019204:GTP-Binding Proteins