Understanding the specificity of receptor tyrosine kinases signaling

ABSTRACT Tyrosine kinase receptors (RTKs) represent a large family of transmembrane proteins present in all metazoans, whose func- tion is to transduce signals from the extracellular milieu to the inside of the cells. The common features of this protein family are: the extracellular domain, devoted to the binding to the specific receptor ligand, a single transmembrane region, and an intracel- lular chain featuring the conserved protein tyrosine kinase domain. RTKs control many aspects of cellular physiology both during development and in adult life, such as cell proliferation, migration, survival and differentiation.