Rho Family Small GTPases in Health and Diseases
A special issue of Cells (ISSN 2073-4409). This special issue belongs to the section "Cell Signaling".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2025 | Viewed by 22
Special Issue Editor
Interests: Tubular epithelial biology; Rho family small GTPases; tight junctions; inflammatory signalling; guanine nucleotide exchange factors; claudins; epithelial-mesenchymal transition
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The mammalian Rho GTPase protein family, a subgroup of the Ras superfamily, includes 20 members. Although for many years research mostly focused on the founding members of the group, Rac, Cdc42, and RhoA, which were first described as master regulators of actin dynamics, today the number of studies on the lesser-known groups (Rnd, RhoD/F, RhoH, RhoU/V, RhoBTB, and RhoT) is steadily increasing. Rho proteins affect a multitude of cell behaviour in a complex manner through both cytoskeleton-dependent and -independent downstream pathways. Accordingly, they are crucial regulators of a diverse array of biological processes, including cell motility, proliferation, survival, polarization, adhesion, vesicle transport, gene transcription, and DNA repair. Rho GTPases integrate a multitude of input signals through a complex network of regulators. Guanine nucleotide exchange factors (GEFs), which control Rho activation, and GTPase-activating proteins (GAPs), which induce inactivation, are both large families. Understanding the role of each of these regulators, unravelling their spatiotemporal and signal-specific control and their connections to effector pathways, is one of the biggest challenges of the field. In line with the crucial roles of Rho proteins, the range of diseases in which their dysregulation is implicated is ever increasing. Importantly, inhibitors of both the small GTPases and their regulators and effectors have also started to emerge, with great potential for possible clinical applications.
In this Special Issue, we are inviting original research articles, reviews, and “perspective” articles on all aspects related to the topic “Rho Family Small GTPases in Health and Disease”.
Dr. Katalin Szászi
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- Rho signalling
- Rho guanine nucleotide exchange factor
- Rho GTPase-activating protein
- Rho effector
- dysregulation of Rho GTPases
- Rho pathway inhibitors
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