Optotransduction Pathway, Exploring Connections with Inflammation

The ability of cells to translate optical radiation into biochemical signals, i.e., optotransduction, plays an important role in the life sciences, including the development of emerging therapeutic strategies, with a relevant influence on inflammation. However, a systemic understanding of the molecular pathways underlying the transduction of these physical stimuli is still lacking. In this work, we present a molecular map of optotransduction reconstructed from the literature and provide its representation as pathway, using the standard Systems Biology Markup Language. This representation enables network-based analyses and allows us to explore the differential effect of stimuli wavelengths and, for the first time, the systematic overlap with other forms of physical transduction, namely mechanotransduction.