Functional cross talk between membrane trafficking and cell signalling The Golgi complex as a signalling platform

Abstract

Eukaryotic cells are complex systems that are capable of fine-tuning their functioning following internal and external perturbations. Their plasma membranes bearseveral different receptor proteins that can sense the external milieu and transduce information across the plasma membrane to cytosolic proteins. These, in turn, transmit the messages to other partners along signalling cascades that lead to the required cellular response. Such events are known as'cell signalling', and these cascades have critical effects on the behaviour of a cell, since they can affect cell motility and growth, and indeed, apoptosis. According to some estimations (Venter 2001; Imanishi et al. 2004), approximately 10-12% of the genes in the human genome encode for signal transduction proteins, thus highlighting the relevance of these functions to the cell.