The long and short of cell signaling
Thursday, August 5, 2010 - 16:56
in Health & Medicine
Like a telegraph transmission, the significance of a cellular signal can change greatly depending on whether it arrives as a brief 'dot' or a sustained 'dash'. For example, transient activation of extracellular receptor kinase 1/2 (ERK) by epidermal growth factor (EGF) causes cells to divide, while prolonged ERK activation induced by heregulin (HRG) instructs these same cells to differentiate.
