A Protein That Can Mean Life or Death for Cells

[Overstressed]

Personal note: Another nice finding from these scientists... Perhaps pathogens (also) messing-up with Mitofusin 2? A possibility?

An abstract:

Sep. 17, 2013 — Each cell in an organism has a sensor that measures the health of its "internal" environment. This "alarm" is found in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), which is able to sense cellular stress and trigger either rescue responses or the death of the cell. A team from the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB), in Barcelona, has discovered that the protein Mitofusin 2 (Mfn2) plays a crucial role in correctly measuring stress levels, and also makes sure the pathways of cell repair or cell death are effective.

The article can be found here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130917132323.htm

Unfortunately, the full article is behind a pay-wall: http://www.nature.com/emboj/journal/v32/n17/full/emboj2013168a.html

 

[Legendrew]

I believe there are quite a few of those sorts of proteins. Cells have to receive constant signals in the form of chemical messengers and proteins telling them to stay alive. In the absence of these proteins the cells undergo apoptosis. Fundamentally cells are programmed to die in the absence of other cells reassuring them that they need to keep going I doubt this is a huge part of the disease pathology as if this were a widespread problem i'm sure there would be a huge risk to a persons life.