Article: Polarity Pathways Make a Connection
- From: "Robert Karl Stonjek" <rstonjek@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2005 14:44:43 -0400 (EDT)
Polarity Pathways Make a Connection
Studies piece together conserved signals for orientation and migration
By Ishani Ganguli
Before a cell can do its job, it needs to get oriented. Cells must determine
their purpose in life, tell their tops from their bottoms, and quite
literally find their place amidst a confusing array of physical and chemical
signals. Cell polarization meets these challenges. Spatial segregation
assumes different roles in embryonic cells, epithelial cells, and neural
precursors. And each cell type relies on a complex web of
signal-transduction events to establish asymmetry.
The protein players are largely conserved across cell type and across
species. Using genetic and biochemical clues, researchers are working to
collect the important molecular pieces, fit them together, and figure out
what they do. The research process is painstaking, but the potential payoff
in understanding how such an essential cellular system is initiated cannot
be overstated: Loss of polarity is a key event in epithelial cells becoming
cancerous, for example, and migration of neuroglial cells determines how a
brain can recover from injury.
This issue's Hot Papers built on existing clues to piece together some of
the biochemical mechanisms behind polarization in mammalian cells. Groups
from Michigan and Virginia found a direct interaction in canine kidney cells
between the two main protein complexes known to be important in epithelial
cell polarity.1 Another group in London worked downstream of this
interaction, in migrating rat astrocytes, to show how one of these complexes
can trigger events leading to directed movement via microtubules in these
glial cells.
According to Tony Pawson at the Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, the first
paper asks "what are the upstream proteins that regulate polarity?" while
the second addresses "how [these] regulatory complexes really connect to the
cellular machinery." Both discoveries began to show how a jumble of proteins
might come together synergistically to accomplish the impressive feat of
cell polarization.
Full Text at TheScientist
http://www.the-scientist.com/2005/9/12/22/1
Comment
Ben 'Margolis', not to be confused with the famous Lynn 'Margulis' (of
symbiogensis fame).
Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek
.
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