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The second-messenger system for peptide hormones
1Department of Medicine, University of Texas Medical School, Houston.
Abstract:
There are three major hormone classes--peptide, steroid, and the newly defined growth factors--each with its own system for signal transduction in the cell. Two interdependent theses are proposed for the peptide hormone: that incoming signal transduction requires coupling to a G protein in a second-messenger pathway, and that second-messenger redundancy assures checks and balances in cell regulation.
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