Hi everyone,

 

I need to know some information but have been unable to find them on the internet or pubmed.

 

Do you know examples of proteins which have different function depending on the tissues that produces it? For example, a protein that is produced by bone may be involved in proliferating cells but the same protein produced by another tissues may actually decrease cell number. It doesn't have to be bone...I just want to know examples of proteins that have different functions depending on their expression.

 

Thanks in advance

 

Geno

don't have any to hand, but one word that might help in your search is pleiotropy.

You can probaly find a bunch of proteins that meet your criteria by looking at the proteins associated with Cyclic AMP and other 2nd messenger systems.

Many proteins within the basic metabolic processes can catalyse the reaction in either direction. Some examples from two opposig processes, glycolysis (breakdown of sugars) and glyconeogenesis (building sugars), are phosphoglucose isomerase, aldolase, enolase, and others. This will depend on the needs of the cell, whether it has plenty of sugars or not. It's not a tissue specific thing.

Thanks everyone for your replies. For a moment I thought noone knew the answer

 

Radical Edward, LucidDreamer and Skye...thanks for your replies. I will look into what you mentioned. BTW, LucidDreamer I like your name..because I am trying to get into Lucid dreaming myself!

 

I appreciate your help.

If you are interested in lucid dreaming I recommend reading "Lucid dreaming" by Stephen LaBarge (maybe Laberge).

Ill name you one: RANKL (Receptor Activator of NF-kB ligand).

 

When applied to osteoclast progenitors, it causes differentiation into osteoclasts. But it is also an important immune modulator, dendritic cell dactivation factor, lymphocyte maturation factor etc etc.

 

i.e. RANKL-/- mice not only have severe osteopetrosis, due to an almost complete lack of osteoclasts, they also have no impaired tooth eruption, and no lymph nodes.

 

 

It really depends on which signaling pathway is activated upon receptor-ligand binding in each cell type.

Sure, the receptor I'm doing my thesis on is the 5-HT1A receptor. It's a serotonergic autoreceptor. It's usually coupled to an inhibition of adenylyl cyclase, however in hippocampal neurons it does not cause this same inhibition.