Scientists Bridge Gap In Cell Com...( A critical step in communication be...)

A critical step in communication between cells that promotes such things as bone formation, limb growth, and the development of other critical tissues, has been found by a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The discovery, reported today (July 17) in the British scientific journal Nature, while fundamental in nature, is important because it adds an essential strand of information to scientists' understanding of how cells relay molecular messages, a process that, if disrupted, can result in cancer and defects in embryonic development.

By revealing the terminus of the pathway by which cells send and receive messages, the find promises a rational basis for the future treatment of some diseases and, more immediately, gives science a new grasp of a process that triggers decisive events in cells.

Studying a well-known signaling protein called MAD, UW-Madison geneticist Allen Laughon and colleagues determined that the protein is responsible for switching genes on or off by binding directly to DNA, in effect telling the cell to start or stop a specified task.

It closes the loop, said Laughon, whose work was accomplished in fruit flies taking advantage of the well-studied process by which signaling governs wing growth. "We've shown that the MAD protein is a direct regulator of target gene transcription in response to a (specific) signal."

The mapping of the communication pathways between cells is a fundamental quest in modern biology. Identifying the messengers -- a large family of proteins that carry genetic signals and switch genes on and off -- and their roles in communicating at a distance has implications for the development of new strategies to treat diseases caused by malfunctioning genes or disrupted pathways of communication.

Communication -- or miscommunication -- between cells is the basis for many diseases. For example, in huma
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Contact: Allen Laughon
alaughon@facstaff.wisc.edu
608-262-2456
University of Wisconsin-Madison
16-Jul-1997