Structural and Computational Biology Unit, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Meyerhofstrasse 1, D-69117 Heidelberg, Germany.
Curr Opin Struct Biol. 2012 Jun;22(3):378-85. doi: 10.1016/j.sbi.2012.03.004. Epub 2012 Apr 3.
Tight regulation of gene products from transcription to protein degradation is required for reliable and robust control of eukaryotic cell physiology. Many of the mechanisms directing cell regulation rely on proteins detecting the state of the cell through context-dependent, tuneable interactions. These interactions underlie the ability of proteins to make decisions by combining regulatory information encoded in a protein's expression level, localisation and modification state. This raises the question, how do proteins integrate available information to correctly make decisions? Over the past decade pioneering work on the nature and function of intrinsically disordered protein regions has revealed many elegant switching mechanisms that underlie cell signalling and regulation, prompting a reevaluation of their role in cooperative decision-making.
真核细胞的生理机能需要可靠和稳健的转录到蛋白降解的基因产物调控。许多细胞调控的机制依赖于蛋白质通过上下文相关的、可调的相互作用来检测细胞的状态。这些相互作用是蛋白质通过组合其表达水平、定位和修饰状态中编码的调控信息来做出决策的能力的基础。这就提出了一个问题，即蛋白质如何整合可用信息来做出正确的决策？在过去的十年中，关于无序蛋白区域的本质和功能的开创性工作揭示了许多优雅的开关机制，这些机制是细胞信号转导和调控的基础，促使人们重新评估它们在协同决策中的作用。
