A New Pathway to Disease Control
By Victoria Miller-Browne, Biology, 2020
This article was originally posted as part of Issue 39: Synthetic.
Cell to cell communication is the basis for how any sort of process is mediated inside of the body. These include processes such as a drug’s mechanism of action, the onset of puberty, disease progression, and even walking and breathing. Cells utilize a multitude of different ways to communicate with each other that include direct contact with other cells and vesicle mediated exo/endocytosis — various chemical signals secreted from cells that stimulate the receptors on the outside of the cell.
As a molecule secreted by a cell connects with a receptor on the surface of another cell, it results in a number of changes occurring within the receiving cell — altering its overall activity. The entity that enacts the change within the cell caused by the ligand-receptor interaction is called a protein switch. A commonly known molecular switch is a Ras protein, which is responsible for enacting pathways such as differentiation, survival, and growth within the cell.
Protein switches such as Ras are imperative in performing metabolic processes and are often areas of interest when analyzing the onset and spreading of diseases within the body. By altering the DNA of a cell to be able to create a synthetic version of a protein designed to already subscribe to certain input and output functions within cellular communication, it would offer a way to completely change how the body works and reacts to its environment. Such synthetic protein switches can lead to the creation of specialized anti-cancer cells with specific surface antigens. They could also lead to being able to control the outputs and inputs of cellular communication in order to maintain natural signaling pathways within cells.
Synthetic protein switches can lead to the creation of specialized anti-cancer cells with specific surface antigens.
There are many difficulties that come along with the creation of said switches, starting with the material used to create the switch. The immune system is very hostile towards foreign substances in the body, and it’s possible the body would reject the engineered protein switch. This could create an autoimmune reaction that could be potentially harmful for the body. Also, signaling pathways are incredibly fast and often include numerous molecular cascades within cells to be able to obtain the resulting output of communication. This complexity could make it very difficult for the engineered signal to propagate and be accurate.
Protein switches are crucial in maintaining homeostasis within the body, and when such protein switches are mutated or ill-functioning, it can lead to numerous, life-threatening diseases such as whooping cough, cholera, and a host of endocrine disorders. Altering the genome to synthetically produce a protein switch, in turn controlling a signalling pathway, can offer a way to change the manner in which cells react to the environment. And with more development, synthetically created protein switches can offer a more nuanced avenue to understanding pathology as a whole.
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