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Abstract
The molecular mechanisms that transmit information from cell surface receptors to the nucleus are exceedingly complex; thus, much effort has been expended in developing computational models to understand these processes. A recent study on modeling the nuclear-cytoplasmic shuttling of Smad2-Smad4 complexes in response to transforming growth factor–β (TGF-β) receptor activation has provided substantial insight into how this signaling network translates the degree of TGF-β receptor activation (input) into the amount of nuclear Smad2-Smad4 complexes (output). The study addressed this question by combining a simple, mechanistic model with targeted experiments, an approach that proved particularly powerful for exploring the fundamental properties of a complex signaling network. The mathematical model revealed that Smad nuclear-cytoplasmic dynamics enables a proportional but time-delayed coupling between the input and the output. As a result, the output can faithfully track gradual changes in the input while the rapid input fluctuations that constitute signaling noise are dampened out.
