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Heterotrimeric Meaning Pathway

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Describe the signalling pathways downstream of the heterotrimeric G proteins Gs, Gi and Gq.

Heterotrimeric G-proteins are an important group of proteins involved in signal transduction and are associated with G-protein coupled receptors (GPCR). These proteins bind to guanine nucleotides: guanosine triphosphate (GTP) and guanosine diphosphate (GDP). Gs, Gi and Gq are the three different G-protein families that exists.
G-proteins are have three subunits, alpha (), beta () and gamma (), each composed of different amino acid therefore they are known as heterotrimeric. The G and G are tightly attached to each other so are known as the beta-gamma complex (G). G subunit has an important feature which is the binding site for exchange of GTP to GDP.

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