What is one possible message that one cell might send to another cell?

Question

This is an actual question and not a joke so can anyone answer seriously?

Answer 1

Hi:
Depends on what kind of cell you are talking about.

Bacterial cells (my fav topic) can send a huge array of signals, like in pathogenic bacteria at the time of colonization, they send out signals to neighboring cells in the form of chemical substances to produce virulence factors like toxins. In short, gene regulation changes are brought about. This is just one example and is one of the effects of a process called Quorum Sensing.

Human cells, or animal cells in general, can send out, for example, hormones or other chemical mediators, that can upregulate or downregulate expression of certain genes that might be needed to help the neighboring cells to better adapt to the situation. This is seen in a process called Apoptosis (Programed cell death), where a virus infected cell kills itself (altruistic!!) and the cells nearby sense the specific chemicals produced by the dying cell and produce, in case of virus infected cells, interferons.

The list of examples is numerous. In fact, till recently, apoptosis was thought to be a eukaryotic phenomenon, but has since been proved even in bacteria, commonly seen in bacteriophage infections of bacteria.

Hope this helps. Cheers!!

Answer 2

Well, think of your nervous system. When you touch something the stimuli is causes a change in the polarization of your sensory neurons at the tip of your fingers. Then this change is transmitted from one neuron to another until it reaches your spine and brain. In the spine the transmission is then moves to your motor neurons and causes the release of chemicals at the in the synapse between the end of the nerve and muscle cells and causing the to contract or relax.

In this scenario bothe electrical and chemical messaged are sent from one cell to another.

Answer 3

Pain

Answer 4

some Ions
Nitric Oxide (NO)
specific proteins

Try searching "cell to cell messenger"