The ability of an animal to respond to its external and internal environment depends on both intercellular and intracellular signaling pathways. Proteins along with small molecules such as ions, sugars, lipids and nucleotides form the basis of communication in intracellular signal transduction.

In this topic, you'll look at intracellular signal transduction and see how it enables a female mosquito to find her blood meal.

What you'll learn in this topic

• some key properties of intracellular signal transduction such as specificity, amplification, translocation, and negative regulation
• how components of olfactory signal transduction in a female mosquito reflect the above four properties
• how an extracellular signal molecule can initiate intracellular signal transduction

Your task is to observe how a bloodthirsty female perceives and responds to sweat from a human arm.