ABSTRACT
JEAN-LOUIS CARPENTIER, ISABELLE HAMER AND MICHELANGELO FOTI
Department of Morphology, Faculty of Medicine, CMU, Rue Michel Servet 1, CH-1211 Geneva 4, Switzerland
INTRODUCTION
Insulin binding to its specific receptor on the surface of target cells initiates a series of events which are crucial in terms of metabolism regulation and in particular in glucose as well as lipid and protein homeostasis. These effects are dependent on the triggering by insulin of the activity of a tyrosine kinase intrinsic to the insulin receptor. Indeed, this activation is itself the starting point of a cascade of protein phosphorylation/ dephosphorylation events leading to the activation of key enzymes in the regulation of the above-mentioned metabolisms (White et al., 1994).
