Benayoun Bérénice A, Veitia Reiner A
Institut Jacques Monod, Bâtiment Buffon, 15 Rue Hélène Brion, Paris Cedex 13, France.
Trends Cell Biol. 2009 May;19(5):189-97. doi: 10.1016/j.tcb.2009.02.003. Epub 2009 Mar 26.
Cellular responses to environmental or physiological cues rely on transduction pathways that must ensure discrimination between different signals. These cascades 'crosstalk' and lead to a combinatorial regulation. This often results in different combinations of post-translational modifications (PTMs) on target proteins, which might act as a molecular barcode. Although appealing, the idea of the existence of such a code for transcription factors is debated. Using general arguments and recent evidence, we propose that a PTM code is not only possible but necessary in the context of transcription factors regulating multiple processes. Thus, the coding potential of PTM combinations should both provide a further layer of information integration from several transduction pathways and warrant highly specific cellular outputs.
细胞对环境或生理信号的反应依赖于转导途径，这些途径必须确保对不同信号进行区分。这些级联反应会“相互作用”并导致组合调控。这通常会导致靶蛋白上翻译后修饰（PTM）的不同组合，这些组合可能充当分子条形码。尽管很有吸引力，但关于转录因子存在这样一种密码的观点仍存在争议。利用一般论据和最新证据，我们提出在转录因子调节多个过程的背景下，PTM密码不仅是可能的，而且是必要的。因此，PTM组合的编码潜力既应提供来自多个转导途径的另一层信息整合，又应保证高度特异性的细胞输出。
