The biology and biochemistry of diacylglycerol signalling

Abstract

A few bottles of Rioja and some late‐evening dinners in the beautiful city of Madrid provided the setting for a workshop on Molecular Advances in Diacylglycerol Signalling. The participants were greeted by the impressive surroundings of the Juan March Institute with a concurrent exhibition of nineteenth‐century French paintings on the human body. A series of excellent talks provided a tantalizing view of the current state of diacylglycerol (DAG) signalling. In this report, I provide an overview of the main concepts that arose at this meeting. The meeting on Molecular Advances in DAG Signalling took place at the Instituto Juan March de Estudios e Investigaciones in Madrid, Spain, between 15 and 17 November 2004, and was organized by M. Kazanietz, P. Parker and T. Iglesias. ![][1] The meeting began on a sad note, as P. Parker (London, UK) remembered Yasutomi Nishizuka, the father of protein kinase C (PKC), who unexpectedly passed away just a few weeks before the meeting, on 4 November 2004. In the late 1970s, Nishizuka and his colleagues discovered PKC as the first receptor for DAG, an orphan lipid at the time, which heralded an entirely new field of lipid signalling. Parker recalled the vibrant personality of Dr Nishizuka, whose infectious enthusiasm for science and PKC was well known. Although PKC is arguably the most recognizable target of DAG, this meeting provided a forum to discuss other DAG receptors that have come centre stage, including chimaerins, Ras guanyl‐releasing proteins (RasGRPs), Munc13, protein kinase Ds (PKDs) and DAG kinases. Clearly, cellular responses that are attributed to DAG, and phorbol esters that mimic DAG action, can no longer be attributed solely to PKCs, which highlights the complexity we face when ascribing cellular responses to this ubiquitous lipid second messenger. ### Diacylglycerol and protein kinase C In the first session of the meeting, A. Newton (San Diego, CA, … [1]: /embed/graphic-1.gif