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Figure 1 | BMC Systems Biology

Figure 1

From: Different designs of kinase-phosphatase interactions and phosphatase sequestration shapes the robustness and signal flow in the MAPK cascade

Figure 1

Schematics of the three layer MAPK cascade with different interaction designs between kinases and phosphatases. The MAPK signaling cascades named as M1, M2, M3 and M4 were built based on their kinase-phosphatase interaction designs. The arrows show the direction of phosphorylation and dephosphorylation. MKKK, MKK and MK represent the three kinases of the MAPK cascade and Phos1, Phos2 and Phos3 represents the phosphatases of the cascade. Phosphorylation of a kinase by its upstream kinase is shown as solid lines with blunt head whereas dephosphorylation of the kinases by their phosphatases is shown with dashed lines with blunt heads. The incoming signal that activated the cascade by phosphorylating the first kinase MKKK is shown as “Signal”. In M1, each layer of the cascade has one phosphatase specifically available for dephosphorylation. M2 shows the design where first two layers have a common phosphatase (Phos1) and the third layer has a specific phosphatase (Phos2). M3 represents a system design where the first layer of the cascade has specific phosphatase (Phos1) but the last two layers are dephosphorylated by a common phosphatase (Phos2). In the system M4, the MKKK and MKK layers are dephosphorylated by Phos1 whereas MKK and MK layers are dephosphorylated by Phos2. Thus the middle layer of the cascade is dephosphorylated by both the phosphatases Phos1 and Phos2.

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