Abstract
Oscillations are commonly observed in cellular behavior and span a wide range of timescales, from seconds in calcium signaling to 24 hours in circadian rhythms. In between lie oscillations with time periods of 1-5 hours seen in NF-κB, p53 and Wnt signaling, which play key roles in the immune system, cell growth/death and embryo development, respectively. In the first part of this article, we provide a brief overview of simple deterministic models of oscillations. In particular, we explain the mechanism of saturated degradation that has been used to model oscillations in the NF-κB, p53 and Wnt systems. The second part deals with the potential physiological role of oscillations. We use the simple models described earlier to explore whether oscillatory signals can encode more information than steady-state signals. We then discuss a few simple genetic circuits that could decode information stored in the average, amplitude or frequency of oscillations. The presence of frequency-detector circuit downstream of NF-κB or p53 would be a strong clue that oscillations are important for the physiological response of these signaling systems.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Current Opinion in Genetics & Development |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| Pages (from-to) | 656-64 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| ISSN | 0959-437X |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Dec 2010 |
Keywords
- Animals
- Circadian Rhythm
- Humans
- Models, Biological
- NF-kappa B
- Signal Transduction
- Tumor Suppressor Protein p53
- Wnt Proteins