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Updated: May 10, 2026

Affinity Precipitation of Active Rho-GEFs Using a GST-tagged Mutant Rho Protein (GST-RhoA(G17A)) from Epithelial Cell Lysates
Published on: March 31, 2012
The 'invisible hand': regulation of RHO GTPases by RHOGDIs
Rafael Garcia-Mata1, Etienne Boulter, Keith Burridge
1Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599 USA. rafaelgm@med.unc.edu
Abstract:
The 'invisible hand' is a term originally coined by Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments to describe the forces of self-interest, competition and supply and demand that regulate the resources in society. This metaphor continues to be used by economists to describe the self-regulating nature of a market economy. The same metaphor can be used to describe the RHO-specific guanine nucleotide dissociation inhibitor (RHOGDI) family, which operates in the background, as an invisible hand, using similar forces to regulate the RHO GTPase cycle.
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