- What did Spemann's experiments reveal about how cells communicate during development?
Cell Signaling
How cells communicate and respond to stimuli.
- How does adrenaline trigger changes inside a liver cell without ever crossing the cell membrane?
- What is cyclic AMP, and why did Earl Sutherland call it a 'second messenger'?
- Why does the second messenger concept apply to so many hormones and neurotransmitters beyond adrenaline?
- How does the discovery of cyclic AMP connect to how caffeine affects the body?
- How do cells sense and regulate their own cholesterol production through feedback loops?
- How did Stanley Cohen's discovery of epidermal growth factor extend the idea of chemical signalling between cells?
- How can a growth-factor signal that never stops being sent lead to cancer?
- How did James Black's rational, receptor-first approach differ from the mass-screening drug discovery of his era?
- Why can't most hormones simply cross a cell's membrane to deliver their signal directly?
- What role do G-proteins play in coupling a surface receptor to what happens inside the cell?
- How does inositol trisphosphate (IP3) mobilise calcium stored inside a cell, and why does that matter for muscle contraction?
- What did Nishizuka discover about how the lipid diacylglycerol activates protein kinase C?
- What cellular processes besides glycogen breakdown are governed by reversible phosphorylation?
- What problem in cell signalling did scientists face before G-proteins were discovered?
- How did Martin Rodbell's experiments on fat cells reveal that a GTP-binding relay protein was required for hormone signals to work?
- Why do cholera toxin and pertussis toxin target G-proteins specifically, and what does that do to a cell?
- Why do roughly a third of modern drugs target G-protein-coupled receptors?
- What did Furchgott discover about the role of endothelial cells in relaxing blood vessel walls?
- How did Murad's finding about nitroglycerin connect to Furchgott's endothelium-derived relaxing factor?
- Why was it surprising that nitric oxide, previously classified as an atmospheric pollutant, turned out to be a biological signalling molecule?
- What modern treatments trace their origin to understanding nitric oxide's role in the cardiovascular system?
- Why had nitroglycerin been used to treat angina for over a century before anyone understood the mechanism?
- How does nitric oxide, a small reactive gas, function as a signalling molecule that relaxes blood vessels?
- Why did the discovery of the nitric oxide pathway overturn assumptions about what kinds of molecules can carry biological signals?
- What later medical treatments, including for erectile dysfunction and septic shock, grew out of the nitric oxide discovery?
- What do G-protein-coupled receptors do, and why do roughly a third of all drugs target them?
- How did discovering integrins change the view of the extracellular matrix from purely structural to signalling?