Tyrosine phosphorylation in signal transduction

Recent work has focused on the elucidation of the mechanisms by which membrane-bound tyrosine kinases transmit signals within the cell. To examine the role of tyrosine phosphorylation the authors have employed the following strategy. First, they have utilized antibodies to phosphotyrosine (anti-P.Tyr) to identify candidate substrates of various tyrosine kinases, such as pp60c-src, the CSF- receptor, or the platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) receptor. Second, they have attempted to characterize the biochemical properties of the putative substrates and to determine in what manner these properties are modified by phosphorylation on tyrosine residues. In this endeavor, they are recapitulating the classic biochemical analysis used to study the effect of kinases on metabolism. The final portion of our work consists of using modern molecular biological strategies to clone the genes or cDNAs for the substrates and overproduce the relevant proteins for studies in vitro in defined systems. This paper describes the first and second aspects of this strategy, the identification and characterization of novel substrate molecules