A two-way street: reciprocal regulation of metabolism and signalling

Signalling is known to regulate metabolism, and it is becoming clear that this regulation is reciprocal, with signalling pathways being regulated by the availability of nutrient-sensitive modifications, such as acetylation and glycosylation. This tight link between signalling and metabolism allows cells to modulate their activities according to metabolic status. It is becoming increasingly clear that cellular signalling and metabolism are not just separate entities but rather are tightly linked. Although nutrient metabolism is known to be regulated by signal transduction, an emerging paradigm is that signalling and transcriptional networks can be modulated by nutrient-sensitive protein modifications, such as acetylation and glycosylation, which depend on the availability of acetyl-CoA and sugar donors such as UDP-N-acetylglucosamine (UDP-GlcNAc), respectively. The integration of metabolic and signalling cues allows cells to modulate activities such as metabolism, cell survival and proliferation according to their intracellular metabolic resources.