The Quantitative Analysis of Specificity in Scaffold-mediated Cell Signaling
Scaffold蛋白介导细胞信号转导专一性的定量分析

Cells use only a relatively limited number of component proteins to transmit a plethora of signals. Accordingly pathways that transduce distinct signals can share protein components. An important yet poorly understood problem in cell and developmental biology is how these component proteins selectively perceive different signaling pathways to transmit different stimuli with "high fidelity"so that distinct signals produce specific cellular response. Current data indicate that scaffold proteins play key roles in the maintenance of specificity and fidelity, hence, based on experimental data, the mathematical models of the yeast mating, invasive growth and stress-responsive MAPK cascades for scaffolding-mediated were developed. Literature (Komarova NL, Zou XF, Nie Q, Bardwell L. A theoretical framework for specificity in cell signaling, Molecular Systems Biology, 2005, doi:10.1038/msb4100031: E1-E5) was extended to include multipathways, and the precise mathematical definition of "specificity" and "fidelity" was proposed. The authors calculated the analytic solutions of MAPK cascade networks and used these results to quantitatively analyze the relationship between "specificity", "fidelity" and kinetic parameters in signaling pathways. It may help to understand cell signaling mechanisms and regulatory processes, and provide a rationale for revealing mechanisms of diseases caused by abnormalities of signal transduction, and novel tools for the prevention and treatment of disease.