title: How do dynamic cellular signals travel long distances?
abstract: Communication is essential. It is vital between cells in multi-cellular organisms, and within cells. A signaling molecule binds to a receptor protein, and initiates a cascade of dynamic events. Signaling is a multistep pathway, which allows signal amplification: if some of the molecules in a pathway transmit the signal to multiple molecules, the result can be a large number of activated molecules across the cell and multiple reactions. That is how a small number of extracellular signaling molecules can produce a major cellular response. The pathway can relay signals from the extracellular space to the nucleus. How do signals travel efficiently over long-distances across the cell? Here we argue that evolution has utilized three properties: a modular functional organization of the cellular network; sequences in some key regions of proteins, such as linkers or loops, which were pre-encoded by evolution to facilitate signaling among domains; and compact interactions between proteins which is achieved via conformational disorder.
authors.affiliation: Basic Research Program, SAIC-Frederick, Inc., Center for Cancer Research Nanobiology Program, NCI-Frederick, Frederick, MD 21702, USA. ruthnu@helix.nih.gov
authors.forename: Ruth
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Nussinov
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002477:Cells / Q000378:metabolism*; D006801:Humans; D011487:Protein Conformation; D017510:Protein Folding; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D015398:Signal Transduction
chemical_list: D011506:Proteins