Team's Model Aids Understanding Of Protein Networks

The new method, known as NetworKIN, can trawl through existing research data and use it to illuminate protein networks that control cellular processes. It focuses on enzymes called kinases, which are involved in many cell signaling pathways, including repair of DNA damage that can lead to cancer. The model was developed by researchers from MIT, the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital in Canada and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Germany. NetworKIN “gives us the tools to take the information we already have and begin to build a map of the kinase signaling pathways within the cells,” said Michael Yaffe, MIT associate professor of biology and biological engineering, a member of MIT's Center for Cancer Research (CCR) and one of the authors of the paper. “By getting a network-wide view, multiple aberrant genes of kinase- controlled processes are more easily targeted,” said Rune Linding, a postdoctoral fellow with joint appointments through the CCR and Mount Sinai. “In the future, complex human diseases will be treated by targeting multiple genes.” Kinases act by phosphorylating, or adding a phosphate group, to a protein. That signal tells a protein what it should be doing. Yaffe estimated that at any one time, 30 to 50 percent of the proteins in a cell are phosphorylated. ... "www.bio.com":[ http://www.bio.com/newsfeatures/newsfeatures_research.jhtml;jsessionid=Y1Q4OEA5QLOBJR3FQLMSFEWHUWBNQIV0?cid=30600022]

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