Historical Background
The small molecular weight GTP-binding proteins of the Rho family, which comprises 22 proteins including RhoA, Rac1, and Cdc42, were originally isolated based on their high degree of homology with the Ras proto-oncogenes (Rho = Ras homologue). Following their identification, a variety of approaches were used to isolate interacting proteins that might convey signals downstream to regulate numerous biological processes. One approach was to use GTP-loaded RhoA as a high-affinity reagent to fish for interacting proteins, and the ROCK kinases were identified in this way (Leung et al. 1995; Ishizaki et al. 1996; Matsui et al. 1996). A number of different names have been used to describe the two kinases and early reports were sometimes not careful in accurately describing which isoforms were...
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Samuel, M.S., Olson, M.F. (2012). ROCK Kinases. In: Choi, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Signaling Molecules. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0461-4_328
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0461-4_328
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