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Transport of Protein Toxins Across Cell Membranes

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New Insights into Cell and Membrane Transport Processes

Part of the book series: New Horizons in Therapeutics ((NHTH))

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Abstract

The protein toxins produced by plants and bacteria are extraordinarily powerful: those of cholera, diphtheria, tetanus, and botulism are responsible for diseases that still kill many thousands of people every year, especially in the Third World. From the point of view of the biologist, their chief interest lies in their high activity: a single molecule of diphtheria toxin will kill a cell. Only hormones have comparable biological activity, and they are products of the organism that they affect; the toxins are produced by alien procaryotes, yet they can profoundly affect eucaryotic life. In this chapter, I give an outline of the properties of some of these proteins, emphasizing the way in which they manage to cross the membrane of the intoxicated cell to arrive at their intracellular target. It must be remembered that they face a double problem: they must first be secreted across the membrane of the cell in which they were synthesized before they can reach another cell. For two useful and recent general reviews, see Eidels et al. (1983) and Middlebrook and Dorner (1984).

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  1. Department of Biochemistry, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9XD, Scotland

    Simon Van Heyningen

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  1. Smith Kline & French Laboratories, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

    George Poste  & Stanley T. Crooke  & 

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© 1986 Plenum Press, New York

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Van Heyningen, S. (1986). Transport of Protein Toxins Across Cell Membranes. In: Poste, G., Crooke, S.T. (eds) New Insights into Cell and Membrane Transport Processes. New Horizons in Therapeutics. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-5062-0_21

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-5062-0_21

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