Intercellular Communication Flashcards
Forms of DIRECT intercellular communication
- Gap Junctions
- Transient direct linkup of surface markers
What are Gap Junctions
Minute tunnels that bridge the cytoplasm of neighbouring cells in some types of tissues.
Function of gap junctions
Ions and small molecules are directly exchanged between closely associated interacting cells without entering the ECF
What are the types of extracellular chemical messengers?
- Paracrines
- Neurotransmitters
- Hormones
- Neurohormones
What are Paracrines?
- Local messengers whose effect is on its immediate neighbouring cells (short distances)
- Distributed by simple diffusion in the interstitial fluid
- Do not gain entry to the blood as they are inactivated by existing enzymes
What are Neurotransmitters?
- Short range chemical messengers released in response to action potentials
- Diffuse from site of release across synaptic cleft to act locally on a target cell
What are Hormones?
- Long-range chemical messengers specifically secreted into the blood by endocrine glands in response to appropriate signals
- Blood carries messengers to other sites in the body where they exert their effects on their target cells some distance away from their site of release
What are Neurohormones?
- Hormones released into the blood by neurosecretory neurons
- Respond to and can conduct electrical signals
- Released when an action potential reaches axon terminals and is then distributed through the blood to distant target cells.
Mechanisms of signal transduction depend on?
- Messenger type
- Receptor type
What are the 2 types of messengers?
- Lipid-soluble which can pass through the lipid bilayer of the target cell’s plasma membrane.
- Water-soluble: Cannot dissolve in the plasma membrane
How do lipid-soluble messengers initiate a response during signal transduction?
Initiate the desired intracellular response by changing the gene activity
How to water-soluble messengers initiate response during signal transduction?
- signals target cells to perform a certain response by binding with receptors specific for that given messenger on the outer surface of the plasma membrane.
- Binding triggers a sequence of intracellular events that controls a particular cellular activity.
Explain what happens when a lipophilic hormone binds to the intracellular receptors
- Lipophilic hormone diffuses through the plasma membrane of the target cell and binds with specific receptor in the cell either in the cytoplasm or nucleus
- Hormone binds to the intracellular receptor
- Hormone binds with DNA’s hormone response element
- Binding activates genes that contain a code for protein synthesis
- Code of activated gene transcribed into mRNA
- mRNA leaves the nucleus and enters the cytoplasm
- mRNA binds to ribosomes to assemble and synthesise new proteins
- Protein released from ribosome
- New protein brings about desired response.
What are the types of receptors?
- Chemically-gated
- Receptor-enzyme complex
- G-Protein coupled receptor
How do chemically-gated receptor channels work?
- Open/close specific chemically gated receptor channels to regulate movement of particular ions across the membrane.
- Receptor itself serves as an ion channel