Signal exchange between different cell types is essential for development and function of multicellular organisms, and its dysregulation is causal in many diseases. Unfortunately, most cell-signaling work has employed single cell types grown under conditions unrelated to their native context. Recent technical developments have started to provide the tools needed to follow signaling between multiple cell types, but gaps in the information they provide have limited their usefulness in building realistic models of heterocellular signaling. Currently, only targeted assays have the necessary sensitivity, selectivity, and spatial resolution to usefully probe heterocellular signaling processes, but these are best used to test specific, mechanistic models. Decades of systems biology research with monocultures has provided a solid foundation for building models of heterocellular signaling, but current models lack a realistic description of regulated proteolysis and the feedback processes triggered within and between cells. Identification and understanding of key regulatory processes in the extracellular environment and of recursive signaling patterns between cells will be essential to building predictive models of heterocellular systems.
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October 2018
Issue Editors
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Cover Image
Cover Image
This issue of Essays in Biochemistry provides an overview of current research at the interface of the disciplines of biochemistry and systems biology and also looks ahead to future interactions. The cover image, based on Figure 2 in the systems biology primer article by Tavassoly et al., depicts the current computational methods used to analyze different types of high-throughput as well as small scale in-depth experimental data in systems biology. For further details, see pages 487-500.
Review Article|
August 23 2018
A systems perspective of heterocellular signaling
Alan Wells;
Alan Wells
1Departments of Pathology and Computational and Systems Biology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburg, PA 15261, U.S.A.
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H. Steven Wiley
2Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA 99352, U.S.A.
Correspondence: H. Steven Wiley (steven.wiley@pnnl.gov)
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Publisher: Portland Press Ltd
Received:
May 23 2018
Revision Received:
July 28 2018
Accepted:
August 02 2018
Online ISSN: 1744-1358
Print ISSN: 0071-1365
© 2018 The Author(s). Published by Portland Press Limited on behalf of the Biochemical Society
2018
Essays Biochem (2018) 62 (4): 607–617.
Article history
Received:
May 23 2018
Revision Received:
July 28 2018
Accepted:
August 02 2018
Citation
Alan Wells, H. Steven Wiley; A systems perspective of heterocellular signaling. Essays Biochem 26 October 2018; 62 (4): 607–617. doi: https://doi.org/10.1042/EBC20180015
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