Structural Reconstruction of Protein-Protein Complexes Involved in Intracellular Signaling

Signaling complexes within the cell convert extracellular cues into physiological outcomes. Their assembly involves signaling enzymes, allosteric regulators and scaffold proteins that often contain long stretches of disordered protein regions, display multi-domain architectures, and binding affinity between individual components is low. These features are indispensable for their central roles as dynamic information processing hubs, on the other hand they also make reconstruction of structurally homogeneous complex samples highly challenging. In this present chapter we discuss protein machinery which influences extracellular signal reception, intracellular pathway activity, and cytoskeletal or transcriptional activity.