Identification and functional study of phosphorylated substrates of specific Cyclin-cyclin dependent kinase complexes

摘要

All living organisms, from prokaryotes to eukaryotes, face the daunting task of accurately replicating themselves. During evolution, eukaryotes have acquired a sophisticated regulatory network to tightly control their replication and division processes, otherwise known as the cell cycle. Lying at the heart of this regulatory network is the cyclin dependent kinase (CDK). At different stages of the cell cycle, CDK recruits specific cyclins to form an active complex, which phosphorylate particular sets of substrates that drive the cell cycle forward. It is of interest to know the roles that particular cyclins play in determining the specificity of the CDK substrates. To address this question, we designed an MS-based biochemical assay to search for substrates of different cyclin-CDK complexes.