Venter symposium 2005 PAS

Receptorer I bakterier och människor . Sensorer för miljö och utveckling på cellninvå. Signalmolekyler i arbete.

Annual Review of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Vol. 40: 519-561 (Volume publication date April 2000)
(doi:10.1146/annurev.pharmtox.40.1.519)

The PAS Superfamily: Sensors of Environmental and Developmental Signals

Yi-Zhong Gu¹ John B. Hogenesch¹ and Christopher A. Bradfield¹

¹McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine Madison, Wisconsin, 53706, ; email: ygu@oncology.wisc.edu , johnh@scripps.edu , bradfield@oncology.wisc.edu

Over the past decade, PAS domains have been identified in dozens of signal transduction molecules and various forms have been found in animals, plants, and prokaryotes. In this review, we summarize this rapidly expanding research area by providing a detailed description of three signal transduction pathways that utilize PAS protein heterodimers to drive their transcriptional output. It is hoped that these model pathways can provide a framework for use in understanding the biology of the less well-understood members of this emerging superfamily, as well as of those to be characterized in the days to come. We use this review to develop the idea that most eukaryotic PAS proteins can be classified by functional similarities, as well as by predicted phylogenetic relationships. We focus on the α-class proteins, which often act as sensors of environmental signals, and the β-class proteins, which typically act as broad-spectrum partners that target these heterodimers to their genomic targets.