The invention provides cells and methods for identifying modulators of
signal transduction, based on transducisome proteins that coordinate and
assemble many types of signal transduction proteins. A transducisome is a
PDZ domain containing protein that binds at least one signal transduction
protein or a PDZ domain containing protein with at least one signal
transduction protein bound. Examples of transducisome proteins include
INAD, GRIP and other recently identified multi-PDZ domain proteins.
Examples of signal transduction proteins include GPCRs, tyrosine kinase
receptors, tyrosine phosphatase receptors, ion channels, phospholipases,
adenylate cyclases, kinases and G-proteins. Also provided are methods for
identifying modulators of signal transduction, proteins (and
polynucleotides encoding the same) corresponding to transducisomes,
modified transducisomes or defective transducisomes to use in assays of
signal transduction, and a screening assay system for detecting
protein-protein interactions.