Insulin cascade activation

In overweight adults, a diabetic metabolic condition may develop (type II or non-insuUn-dependent diabetes) when there is a relative insulin deficiency-enhanced demand cannot be met by a diminishing insulin secretion. The cause of increased insulin requirement is a loss of insulin receptors or an impairment of the signal cascade activated by the insulin receptor. Accordingly, insulin sensitivity of cells declines. This can be illustrated by comparing concentration-binding curves in cells from normal and obese individuals... 

Fig. 1.57. Model of the regulation of translation by insulin. Insulin ( and other growth factors) activates the Akt kinase pathway (see ch. 10), whose final result is the phosphorylation of 4E-BPl, a regulatory protein of translation initiation. The 4E-BP1 protein inactivates the initation factor eIF-4E by complex formation. eIE-4E is required, together with the proteins eIE-4A and p220, for the binding of the 40S subunit of the ribosome to the cap structure of the mRNA. If the 4E-BP1 protein becomes phosphorylated as a result of insulin-mediated activation of the PI3 kinase/Akt kinase cascade, then eIE-4E is liberated from the inactive eIP-4E 4E-BPl complex and protein biosynthesis can begin.

Insulin binding activates receptor tyrosine kinase activity and earn phorylation cascade that modulates various intracellular proteins. Fo insulin binding inhibits hormone-sensitive lipase in adipocytes. It appa so by activating a phosphatase that dephosphorylates the lipase. In adi... 

Figure 1 Insulin signal transduction cascade (simplified). Intracellular kinases affected by tyrosine phosphorylation activation/deactivation under phosphotyrosine phosphatase (PTPase) regulation (vanadium-inhibitable) include (especially) IRS-I, IRS-2, she, and MAPK. V indicates possible sites of vanadium s mechanism of action. Cytosolic protein tyrosine kinase (CytPTK, not shown) stimulation by phosphatase inhibition is independent of the insulin cascade, but is also multi-step, and is particularly susceptible to vanadyl stimulation...

Stimulation of the insulin receptor results in the activation of two major pathways [3] (i) the mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase cascade (discussed in chapter MAP kinase cascade) and (ii) the phospha-tidylinositol 3-kinase (PI 3-kinase) pathway which has been extensively studied in the context of the metabolic responses to insulin (summarized in Table 1 and Fig. 2). 

Growth promoting effects of insulin occur via interaction of the IR with Grb-2 or SHC adaptor proteins. The cascade from Grb-2 or SHC includes ras, raf, sos and MEK, culminating in activation of the gene transcription factor MAPK. Refer again to Figure 4.21. 

Once autophosphorylation begins, a complex of other events ensues. An insulin receptor substrate (IRS-1) binds the receptor and is phosphorylated on tyrosine residues, allowing proteins with SH2 (src homology) domains to bind to the. phosphotyrosine residues on IRS-1 and become active. In this way, the receptor activates several enzyme cascades, which involve ... 

These molecules span the membrane with only one a-helix. The subunits of the dimeric receptor (red and blue) each consist of two polypeptides (a and P) bound by disulfide bonds. The a-chains together bind the insulin, while the p-chains contain the transmembrane helix and, at the C-terminus, domains with tyrosine kinase activity. In the activated state, the kinase domains phosphorylate themselves and also mediator proteins (receptor substrates) that set in motion cascades of further phosphorylations (see pp. 120 and 388). 

The diverse effects of insulin (see p. 160) are mediated by protein kinases that mutually activate each other in the form of enzyme cascades. At the end of this chain there are kinases that influence gene transcription in the nucleus by phosphorylating target proteins, or promote the uptake of glucose and its conversion into glycogen. The signal transduction pathways involved have not yet been fully explained. They are presented here in a simplified form. 

The effects of insulin on transcription are shown on the left of the illustration. Adaptor proteins Crb-2 and SOS ( son of sevenless ) bind to the phosphorylated IRS (insulin-receptor substrate) and activate the G protein Ras (named after its gene, the oncogene ras see p.398). Ras activates the protein kinase Raf (another oncogene product). Raf sets in motion a phosphorylation cascade that leads via the kinases MEK and ERK (also known as MARK, mitogen-activated protein kinase ) to the phosphorylation of transcription factors in the nucleus. 

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