| Date | 25th, Aug 2020 |
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image: The slow-moving ships on the open sea serve to illustrate the limited cAMP dynamics. The whirlpools represent cAMP nanodomains around PDEs. view more
Credit: Charlotte Konrad, MDC
There are up to a hundred different receptors on the surface of each cell in the human body. The cell uses these receptors to receive extracellular signals, which it then transmits to its interior. Such signals arrive at the cell in various forms, including as sensory perceptions, neurotransmitters like dopamine, or hormones like insulin.
One of the most important signaling molecules the cell uses to transmit such stimuli to its interior, which then triggers the corresponding signaling pathways, is a small molecule called cAMP. This so-called second messenger was discovered in the 1950s. Until now, experimental observations have assumed that cAMP diffuses freely - i.e., that its concentration is basically the same throughout the cell - and that one signal should therefore encompass the entire cell.
"But since the early 1980s we have known, for example, that two different heart cell receptors release exactly the same amount of cAMP when they receive an external signal, yet completely different effects are produced inside the cell," reports Dr. Andreas Bock. Together with Dr. Paolo Annibale, Bock is temporarily heading the
