HACKER Q&A
📣 amts

How do signalling molecules find their targets at large/dense distances?


Though it is understandable that a biology question may be a bit out of range at HN, but maybe you can repurpose some of the data collection and thought algorithms for this question or have a chance to ask someone experienced in biotech etc.

Some time ago I asked a question at biology stackexchenge [1], and it seems it hadn't received a comprehensive answer.

Additional context is that there are ~10K biochemical reactions happening in ~every cell per second and for a signalling molecule to get to its target it needs to get through a rather dense intercellular milieu.

[1] https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/88735/how-do-signalling-molecules-find-their-receptors-at-large-distances


  👤 rolph Accepted Answer ✓
specific signaling, is transported from origin to insertion point by way of ~ persistent "tracks"

[1] below is probably most directly relevent to what your asking, but finer detail is here [2][3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intracellular_transport

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_signaling

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_transduction