Cells in the body exchange a number of signals with their surroundings. Deficient signal pathways may adversely affect the function of cells and cause diseases. However, we hardly know more than the vocabulary of cellular language. It is unknown how the "words" are combined in "sentences." If cell grammar was known, complex processes in cells might be understood. Researchers of KIT have now presented a method to decode the grammar of cell signals in the journal Angewandte Chemie (Applied Chemistry).
"Receptors on cell membranes react to a multitude of signal molecules. They represent the vocabulary of communication," Christof Niemeyer of the Institute for Biological Interfaces of KIT explains. As a rule, several, spatially distributed receptors are addressed in parallel, just as in human language, where several words are combined in a sentence. The exact meaning of the individual words is determined by the context of all components of the sentence only. "With the help of our new MOSAIC method, we can now specifically decode not only vocabulary, but whole sentences of the cell language."
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