Signaling pathways as linear transmitters
Abstract
One challenge in biology is to make sense of the complexity of biological networks. A good system to approach this is signaling pathways, whose well-characterized molecular details allow us to relate the internal processes of each pathway to their input-output behavior. In this study, we analyzed mathematical models of three metazoan signaling pathways: the canonical Wnt, ERK, and Tgfβ pathways. We find an unexpected convergence: the three pathways behave in some physiological contexts as linear signal transmitters. Testing the results experimentally, we present direct measurements of linear input-output behavior in the Wnt and ERK pathways. Analytics from each model further reveal that linearity arises through different means in each pathway, which we tested experimentally in the Wnt and ERK pathways. Linearity is a desired property in engineering where it facilitates fidelity and superposition in signal transmission. Our findings illustrate how cells tune different complex networks to converge on the same behavior.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files. Source data files have been provided for Figures 2 and 3.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
James S. McDonnell Foundation (220020365)
- Lea Goentoro
National Science Foundation (NSF.145863)
- Lea Goentoro
National Institutes of Health (5T32GM007616-37)
- Harry Nunns
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2018, Nunns & Goentoro
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 4,281
- views
-
- 761
- downloads
-
- 23
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Further reading
-
- Cell Biology
- Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
Organelle heterogeneity and inter-organelle contacts within a single cell contribute to the limited sensitivity of current organelle separation techniques, thus hindering organelle subpopulation characterization. Here, we use direct current insulator-based dielectrophoresis (DC-iDEP) as an unbiased separation method and demonstrate its capability by identifying distinct distribution patterns of insulin vesicles from INS-1E insulinoma cells. A multiple voltage DC-iDEP strategy with increased range and sensitivity has been applied, and a differentiation factor (ratio of electrokinetic to dielectrophoretic mobility) has been used to characterize features of insulin vesicle distribution patterns. We observed a significant difference in the distribution pattern of insulin vesicles isolated from glucose-stimulated cells relative to unstimulated cells, in accordance with maturation of vesicles upon glucose stimulation. We interpret the difference in distribution pattern to be indicative of high-resolution separation of vesicle subpopulations. DC-iDEP provides a path for future characterization of subtle biochemical differences of organelle subpopulations within any biological system.
-
- Cell Biology
Regeneration of sensory axons after a burn injury depends on early keratinocyte responses regulated by the wound microenvironment.