Insulin Growth Factors
Insulin Growth Factors
Insulin Growth Factors
Insulin growth factors are the proteins that have sequence similarities to insulin. They are used to allow cells to communicate with the physiologic environment, a system commonly referred to as the IGF axis. In most animals, this hormone is secreted by the liver when it is stimulated by growth hormone or GH. If insulin growth factors are not secreted properly in animals, it can lead to a variety of diseases including cancers. When the hormone is functioning properly, it can stimulate proliferation of cells while inhibiting cell death. The effects vary throughout the animal body because many different tissues will be affected by insulin growth factors. At high concentrations this chemical can activate insulin receptors to compliment the natural effects of insulin.
cleavage sites indicate that the insulin receptors ins-1 are more closely related to insulin in mammals than they are in other animals. In these types of animals, this implies that the penetrant arrest of these chemicals at the dauer state can enhance the weak daf-2 mutants, which implies that ins-s can be used to antagonize these receptors to signal inulin. The coding regions for these genes implies that there is a redundancy as only one other ins gene can be used as a predicted C peptide for signaling das-2, but four of the genes do not. This indicated that there is still functional diversity within this gene family. The specific effects of insulin growth factors in a variety of animals and how isolating or eliminating genes within these animals is expanding the understanding of how these chemicals function. However, additional study is necessary to determine how these methods could be applied to mammals.