The FRS2 family of adaptor/scaffold proteins has two members, FRS2a and FRS2b. Both proteins contain N-terminal myristylation sites for localization on the plasma membrane and a PTB domain for binding to limited species of receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs), including the FGF receptor, the neurotophin receptor, RET, and ALK. Activation of these RTKs allows FRS2 proteins to become phosphorylated of tyrosine residues and then bind to Grb2 and Shp2, a SH2 domain-containing adaptor and a tyrosine phosphatase, respectively. Subsequently, Shp2 activates a Ras/ERK pathway and Grb2 activates a Ras/ERK, phosphatidyl inositol (PI)-3 kinase and ubiquitination/ degradation pathways by binding to SOS, Gab1, and Cbl via the SH3 domains of Grb2. FRS2a acts as 'a conning center' in FGF signaling mainly because it induces sustained levels of activation of ERK via Shp2-binding sites and Grb2-binding sites, though the contribution of the former is greater. Ample amounts of evidence indicate that proteins lacking catalytic activity, so called scaffolding adaptor proteins, relay many key events of signal transduction from upstream components such as receptors to downstream elements.(1-3) The scaffold adaptor proteins that are upstream of RTK signal transduction are classified into two groups. One is comprised of docking proteins that have multiple tyrosine phosphorylation sites to dock downstream signaling proteins. They also often have other domains to bind other molecules. This group includes fibroblast growth factor (FGF) receptor substrate 2 (FRS2), a new SH2-containing sequence (Shc), Grb2-associated binder (Gab), (4,5) insulin receptor substrate (IRS), and downstream of kinase (Dok)-family proteins.(6) Several proteins in this group are subdivided into a group of membrane-linked docking proteins (MLDP) (7) (Fig. 1). MLDP is localized in the lipid component of plasma membranes, since the protein contains a membrane-anchor domain of a stretch of hydrophobic amino acid residues and/or a pleckstrin homology (PH) domain at or close to the N-terminus. The other is comprised of adaptor proteins in a narrow sense. They have only SH3 or/and SH2 domains to bind signaling proteins. (7,8) This group includes Grb2, Crk, and Nck.Some of the scaffold adaptor proteins have a phosphotyrosine binding (PTB) domain or a Src homology (SH)2 domain to bind specific residues containing a tyrosine residue that becomes phosphorylated by activated RTKs or other tyrosine kinases. All the scaffold adaptor proteins act in the specification and/or amplification of the signal transduction pathway. Since these scaffold proteins were first discovered almost two decades ago, signal transduction pathways have emerged as a very complex network. In this review, I would like to summarize what is known about FRS2 proteins, a relatively new family of docking/ adaptor proteins.FRS2 stands for FGF receptor substrate 2. (9) What then is FGF receptor substrate 1? It is actually PLCγ, which was identified as the first substrate of FGF receptor tyrosine kinases. (10) FRS2 is...