Spatial and Temporal Aspects of Signalling Synopsis

The function and efficiency of cell signalling pathways are very dependent on their organization both in space and time. With regard to spatial organization, signalling components are highly organized with respect to their cellular location and how they transmit information from one region of the cell to another. This spatial organization of signalling pathways depends on the molecular interactions that occur between signalling components that use signal transduction domains to construct signalling pathways. Very often, the components responsible for information transfer mechanisms are held in place by being attached to scaffolding proteins to form macromolecular signalling complexes. Sometimes these macromolecular complexes can be organized further by being localized to specific regions of the cell, as found in lipid rafts and caveolae or in the T-tubule regions of skeletal and cardiac cells.