How can growth factors cause cellular changes by binding to their receptors?
And how can the deregulation of these proliferative programs lead to cell transformation?

Is ras involved?

A signaling pathway reaches from the cell surface into the nucleus
Studies in normal fibroblasts
Serum starvation
Non-growing, quiescent state termed G0
Fresh serum (add mitogenic growth factors)
synchronous growing and division
Could this be similar to the difference between a normal cell and a cancerous one?

Cancer is a disease of uncontrolled cell proliferation
Cancer and normal cells utilize control circuitry that is almost identical
Cancer cells tweak existing controls

Immediate Early Genes (IEG)
Serum addition = growth factor addition
Switched on IEG push cells out of G0
Not affected by cyclohexamide
an inhibitor of protein synthesis
Signaling machinery must have been in place at the moment factors were added

Conclusion...
Some of the immediate and delayed early gene expression groups are found to be express at high levels in cancer cells

Therefore, understanding how these signaling cascades operate clearly is relevant to understanding cancer

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