This book is based on lectures on regulation and signal transduction that are offered to students of biochemistry, biology and chemistry at the University of Bayreuth. During the pre paration of these lectures I realized that it is extremely difficult to achieve an overview of the area of signal transduction and regulation. Our knowledge of signal transduction processes has exploded in the past ten years and this fast progress has been reflected only slowly in the major textbooks. Furthermore, our progress in under-standing signal transduction processes has increased to a point where - in contrast to the situation a decade ago - the basic priciples of intra- and intercellular signaling are quite well established. Importantly, signaling processes can be described nowadays more and more on a molecular level. The great increase in structural and biochemical information on signaling processes provides us now the rational chemical and bioche-mical basis that is required for understanding the interplay between signaling molecu-les and the biological function of signaling pathways.
It is the aim of the present book to describe the structural and biochemical proper-ties of signaling molecules and their regulation, the interaction of signaling proteins at the various levels of signal transduction and to work out the basic principles of cellular communication. As far as possible molecular aspects have been included. Starting from regulation at the level of genes and of enzymes the book concentrates on the major intracellular signaling molecules and signaling pathways and then describes the interplay and cooperation of various signaling pathways in central cellular processes like cell cycle regulation, tumorigensis and apoptosis.
Signaling and regulation processes influence all aspects of cellular function and a book on this topic necessarily must confine on the exemplary aspects. Numerous stu-dies in very diverse systems have revealed that the basic principles of signaling and regulation are similar in all higher organims. Therefore the book concentrates on the best studied reactions and components of selected signaling pathways and does not try to describe distinct signaling pathways (e.g. the vision process) in a complete way. Fur-thermore results from very different eucaryotic organisms and tissues have been inclu-ded. Due to the huge number of publications on the topic, the references cited had to be highly selected for and it may be forgiven that mostly reviews are cited and that ori-ginal articles have been selected on a more or less subjective basis.
Cellular signaling in higher organisms is a major topic in modern medical and phar-macological research and is of central importance in biomolecular sciences. Accor-dingly, the book concentrates on signaling and regulation in animal systems and in man. Plant systems could not be considered and results from lower eucaryotes and procaryotes are only cited if they are of exemplary character.
The present book is based on a german edition which appeared in 1997. Where necessary the book has been updated citing data from up to 1998. The rapid progress in some areas made it necessary to rewrite some chapters as e.g. on apoptosis comple-tely.