Protein Kinases

The reversible addition of phosphate groups to proteins is important for the transmission of signals within eukaryotic cells and, as a result, protein phosphorylation and dephosphorylation regulate many diverse cellular processes. As the number of known protein kinases has increased at an ever-accelerating pace, it has become more challenging to determine which protein kinases interact with which substrates in the cell. The determination of consensus phosphorylation site motifs by amino acid sequence alignment of known substrates has proven useful in this pursuit. These motifs can be helpful for predicting phosphorylation sites for specific protein kinases within a potential protein substrate.