Research focus – Cellular Communication

Cellular signalling is inherent to multicellular life. It allows the multitude of processes in individual cells to proceed in a coordinated fashion to the benefit of the organism. In the human body, logistic signals travel between cells in the nervous system, via the blood stream and locally inside tissues. At the cell border (membrane), signals are transduced and travel further into the cell interior, where they become integrated with other signals and finally target specific processes controlling cell division, specialisation (differentiation), energy consumption (metabolism), gene transcription, and many other cellular functions.

The central role of cellular signalling is clearly exposed in the recent full draft of the human genome. This achievement reveals that of the approximately 30.000 genes that constitute the genome, more than 20% are involved in signalling at some level. Specifically more than 3000 genes are involved in transcription/translation; approximately 2000 genes are involved in intracellular signalling (hereunder almost 600 in the kinase family and approximately 200 in the phosphatase families implicated in protein phosphorylation) and 1500 in cell-cell communication. The large fraction of the genome devoted to cellular signalling illustrates the fundamental importance of these processes. Likewise, signalling molecules are often perturbed in disease and are major targets for drug developments. For example, the majority of genes contributing to cancer characterised so far (oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes) are signalling molecules and transcription factors. This, combined with a toolbox of new techniques in proteomics and functional genomics that can address interactions and substrates, will lead to a strong growth in understanding of signalling and take the field from focus on linear pathways to understanding complex and integrated intracellular signalling networks. In this context, progress far beyond the state-of-the-art is feasible and will happen rapidly.