You may think that cells just live, grow, and survive on their own, but cells actually need signals that tell them to survive. The survival signal pathway plays an important role for controlling cell survival and programmed cell death. If there are certain changes or mutations in this pathway, it can lead to uncontrolled cell death or survival. The key players in this pathway are RTK, PI 3-kinase, PIP3, Akt, Bad, and Bcl2. When the survival signal binds, it causes cross phosphorylation of RTK to occur. The added phosphates act as a binding site for PI 3 kinase. When PI 3 kinase binds to RTK, it is activated and phosphorylates PIP2, creating PIP3. Once phosphorylated, PIP3 is a binding site for Akt as well as protein kinase 1. Protein kinase 1 and 2 phosphorylate Akt, which leads it to dissociate from PIP3. As a result, Akt can phosphorylate Bad, preventing it from causing programmed cell death. Inactive bad allows Bcl2 to inhibit programed cell death and send the survival signal.
Comments
Consistency in molecule names
I notciced that sometimes you refer to it as "PI 3-kinase" or just "PI 3 Kinase". The loss of hyphen is not a big deal but once you choose a way to write the name you should stick with it through the entirety of the paper so that it is consistent.
I love this paragraph and it
I love this paragraph and it is very informative. My only suggestion would be to have a few sentences that explain what "RTK, PI 3-kinase, PIP3, Akt, Bad, and Bcl2" are and what they do for the readers that aren't knowledgable in this area. (By the way, this is giving my flashbacks to cell and molecular bio -- love this class) Nice job!