Epidermal growth factor receptor signaling in tissues

A peptide purified from the salivary gland of a mouse was shown few years ago to accelerate incisor eruption and eyelid opening in newborn mice, and was named epidermal growth factor (EGF). The members of this family of peptide growth factors had been identified in numerous physiological and pathological contexts. EGF binds to a cell surface EGF receptor, which induces a biochemical modification (phosphorylation) of the receptor's cytoplasmic tail. There is a growing consensus in the research community that, in addition to cellular and molecular studies, the dynamics of the EGFR network and its operation must be examined in tissues. A key challenge is to integrate the existing molecular and cellular information into a system-level description of the EGFR network at the tissue and organism level. In this paper, the two examples of EGFR signaling in tissues are described, and the recent efforts to model EGFR autocrine loops, which is a predominant mode of EGFR activation in vivo, are summarized.