This is pretty cool. Understanding the downstream components of the pathway will be critical for developing a more targeted therapeutic approach. IFN-gamma is a cytokine - a signaling molecule that turns on your inflammatory / immune response. That is a pretty heavy hammer.
iirc interferon gamma is a cool sounding name but what it does is more esoteric than say interferon alpha or beta, which more directly activate immune response at the site of release.
Can someone provide some sort of overview as to how these sort of pathways, or on a even more detailed level, specific protein receptors for certain diseases, are identified?
I'm not qualified to properly respond but I've accepted what Michael Levin says about what cancer is, basically when cells become 'deaf' to the tissues around them which would normally either (by 'telling' them) make a cell behave as one of these cells should, or end up destroying the invader. Cancer cells ignore the message and behave like single -celled organisms instead. Cancer doesn't have just one component that can be detected by testing though, multiple different signalling and communication mechanisms all have to be broken at once. There's many paths that can lead to it and it's overall extremely varied as a disease iiuc.
Identifying these pathways would probably be by genetic sequencing, protein folding/behaviour analysis and extensive in-test-tube experimentation with living cell cultures.. but I'm not in the field so I don't really know. Maybe there's a voktage-gradient-memory-based (see Michael Levin's work) way to detect this type of misbehavior too? That'd be really cool!
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[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 34.9 ms ] threadCyto - cell, kine - movement
and covers a broad range of molecules, but generally excludes hormones and growth factors.
They are not exclusively to immune modulation, there are many other types too.
But like 99% of the time someone mentions cytokines in an actual conversation they are taking about inflammatory / immune signaling.[1]
Immune cells are far and away the largest class of circulating motile cells, no?
1. https://testdirectory.questdiagnostics.com/test/test-detail/...
Note that it isn't quite the same as literal vs figurative, since nobody's talking about metaphorical or poetic molecules.
______
With love perfuse, pen to paper,
It shall diffuse, sweet as vapor,
Take this letter, mine to thine,
There is no better Cytokine
Identifying these pathways would probably be by genetic sequencing, protein folding/behaviour analysis and extensive in-test-tube experimentation with living cell cultures.. but I'm not in the field so I don't really know. Maybe there's a voktage-gradient-memory-based (see Michael Levin's work) way to detect this type of misbehavior too? That'd be really cool!