Scaffold proteins and immune-cell signalling

Abstract

Over the past 20 years great progress has been made in defining most of the key signalling pathways that functionally regulate immune cells. Recently, it has become clear that scaffold proteins have a crucial role in regulating many of these signalling cascades. By binding two or more components of a signalling pathway, scaffold proteins can help to localize signalling molecules to a specific part of the cell or to enhance the efficacy of a signalling pathway. Scaffold proteins can also affect the thresholds and the dynamics of signalling reactions by coordinating positive and negative feedback signals. In this Review, we focus on recent progress in the understanding of the function of scaffold proteins in immune cells.