Effects of microgravity environment on intracellular signal transduction pathways

Microgravity environment is a stress and extracellular signal that affects cellular morphology and function through signal transduction system, thus leading to certain biological effect. At present, many signaling pathways have been reported to be involved in the regulation of cell function under microgravity environment, such as NF-κB signaling pathway, Notch signaling pathway, MAPK signaling pathway, HSP signaling pathway and so on, and these reports have laid a foundation for the molecular studies of cytolergy under outer space environment. The recent progress in the researches on intracellular signaling pathways affected by microgravity is herewith reviewed in present paper in the hope of providing references for understanding the cell activity in space environment, and to find the ways to alleviate the harmful effects caused by the microgravity environment.