October (Final Notebook)

Life is surrounded by stress! More correctly, cells are constantly exposed to different stress stimuli. These may be acute or chronic in nature and may take the form of both chemical and physical stimuli. Changes in environment, injury, or disease may place an organism under stress. Evolution has provided many different means by which organisms can adapt to changes in stress, and the stress response is a well-conserved homeostatic reaction that applies equally to prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms. This reaction may include a diverse spectrum of responses ranging from the induction of heat shock response proteins resulting from an acute change in environmental temperature to the activation of signaling pathways in response to chemicals, such as phorbol ester activation of protein kinase C.