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Abstract
Intercellular communication in multicellular organisms requires the relay of extracellular signals by cell surface proteins to the interiors of cells. The availability of genome sequences from humans and several model organisms has facilitated the identification of several human plasma membrane receptor families and allowed the analysis of their phylogeny. This review provides a global categorization of most known signal transduction-associated receptors as enzymes, recruiters, and latent transcription factors. The evolution of known families of human plasma membrane signaling receptors was traced in current literature and validated by sequence relatedness. This global analysis reveals themes that recur during receptor evolution and allows the formulation of hypotheses for the origins of receptors. The human receptor families involved in signaling (with the exception of channels) are presented in the Human Plasma Membrane Receptome database.
