Cell signalling crosstalk in development

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Communication between cells is no different than that between individuals over a phone, where ideally one speaks and the other listens. Carrying a conversation relies on active participants that trade places, taking turns speaking and listening. With cell phones, information travels from the mobile device to a number of towers in a network, finding the quickest route to the appropriate receiver. Given the number of calls made in any one network and at any one time, there is a chance your call may disrupt someone else's in what is called undesirable crosstalk. Cell-cell communication is comparable and cells have multiple networks each a signaling pathway composed of numerous protein components that receive and pass on information in the form of molecular signals to and from the nucleus. Unlike cell phone communication, cells have networks that are interconnected and allow for desirable crosstalk, linking many pathways and providing a mechanism that finely tunes the original signal and the cell's response depending on the conditions. What starts out as beneficial to a cell, however, can turn disastrous when undesirable crosstalk upsets the balance and the original signal gets misinterpreted. This is the case when one signaling pathway accepts the wrong signal into the network, or accepts the right one, but at the wrong time. This also happens when a signaling pathway is flooded with crosstalk from multiple pathways. This mis-information weakens the integrity of the entire signaling network. For a cell, the end result is the breakdown in the normal circuitry, which has dire consequences as there is now uncontrollable "chatter" and no way to "hand-off" the appropriate signal to the next player. My major objective is to understand how signaling pathways decipher and regulate the crosstalk converging on them, allowing for the correct flow of molecular information to occur while quenching undesirable signaling. Elucidating the mechanisms by which cells use crosstalk to modulate signaling pathways during embryonic development is of great importance as atypical, unnecessary and often surplus crosstalk is correlated later to disease conditions including, but not limited to cancer, kidney disease, osteoporosis and Schizophrenia.