We have published a new slide show, in PDF format, dealing with protein phosphorylation.  We start the seminar with a quote from Barbara McClintock about cellular memory. This serves to emphasize that cells need to construct a symbolic representation of their environment, and keep that in memory, in order to respond appropriately to the (changing) demands of the organism they belong to. Post-translational modifications, driven by receptor mechanisms, play an essential role in the construction of that symbolic representation. The seminar continues with a description of the numerous protein modifications, ranging from methylation to ubiquitinylation, that are employed by cells to modify protein activity or subcellular localization. We focus on phosphorylation and provide a brief description of how it came to light, with particular attention to the role glycogen phosphorylase has played in all this (1956 krebs & fisher and 1988 johnson). We next describe the phosphorylation process, the potential phosphate donors (in pro and eukaryotes) and we provide detailed information about how protein kinases enable the transfer of phosphate. We finish with a description of protein dephosphorylation and the families of protein phosphatases.

go to the slideshow webpage