Abstract
The Notch pathway, as the Wnt–β-catenin pathway, is an important signalling pathway in vertebrate and invertebrate development. It is involved in embryogenesis and morphogenesis and plays a major role in the fate of stem cells to differentiation. The loss of function of some of its actors leads to hereditary malformations, and activating mutations and/or overexpression are found in malignant diseases.
Briefly, protein messengers called DSL (Delta, Serrate, Lag2, after the names of the ligands found, respectively, in mammals, Drosophila and Caenorhabditis elegans) recognise and activate membrane receptors called NOTCH, this activation consisting in receptor cleavage. The cleavage products can then migrate into the nucleus and activate the transcription of target genes through inhibition of transcriptional repressors. One of the important features in this pathway is the juxtacrine interaction of ligands and receptors, both ligands and receptors being transmembrane proteins: the presentation of a ligand to a neighbour cell induces the activation of the receptor cell.
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Further Reading
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Robert, J. (2015). Notch Pathway. In: Textbook of Cell Signalling in Cancer. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14340-8_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14340-8_8
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