Abstract

To investigate individual signalling proteins and pathways, chemical tools provide a powerful complement to existing genetic, chemical genetic and immunologic methods. In particular, understanding phosphorylation-mediated signalling in real time gives important information about the regulation of cellular function and insights into the origin of disease. Our laboratory focuses on the development of novel chemically based tools to decipher signal transduction pathways. These tools include novel, fast acting kinase inhibitors, positional scanning peptide libraries for investigation of substrate specificity of kinases and fluorescent probes which allow the study of intracellular localisation of kinases. The development of some of these tools as well as examples of their applications will be discussed.