Western Blotting Analysis as a Tool to Study Receptor Tyrosine Kinases
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Receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) are involved in critical aspects of cell physiology ranging from cell �survival, proliferation, growth, migration, and differentiation. A tight control of the extent and duration of signals elicited by activated RTKs is crucial for preventing over-stimulation, which can ultimately lead to unrestrained proliferative ability and neoplastic growth. Ligand-induced downregulation of RTKs has emerged as a key negative regulatory mechanism that can accomplish signaling attenuation, by removing activated receptors from the cell surface and committing them to degradation. The ability of RTKs to escape from ligand-induced downregulation has been reported as a recurrent mechanism of oncogenic deregulation in cancer.
Western blotting procedures have been extensively proven as straightforward assays to evaluate �protein expression levels and have been widely applied to study RTKs downregulation.