Cross-talk between Rho and Rac GTPases drives deterministic exploration of cellular shape space and morphological heterogeneity.

ABSTRACT: One goal of cell biology is to understand how cells adopt different shapes in response to varying environmental and cellular conditions. Achieving a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between cell shape and environment requires a systems-level understanding of the signalling networks that respond to external cues and regulate the cytoskeleton. Classical biochemical and genetic approaches have identified thousands of individual components that contribute to cell shape, but it remains difficult to predict how cell shape is generated by the activity of these components using bottom-up approaches because of the complex nature of their interactions in space and time. Here, we describe the regulation of cellular shape by signalling systems using a top-down approach. We first exploit

SUBMITTER: Sailem H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3909273 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature