  The mating pathway in \emph{Saccharomyces cerevisiae} is one of the best
understood signal transduction pathways in eukaryotes. It transmits the mating
signal from plasma membrane into the nucleus through the G-protein coupled
receptor and the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascade. According to
the current understandings of the mating pathway, we construct a system of
ordinary differential equations to describe the process. Our model is
consistent with a wide range of experiments, indicating that it captures some
main characteristics of the signal transduction along the pathway.
Investigation with the model reveals that the shuttling of the scaffold protein
and the dephosphorylation of kinases involved in the MAPK cascade cooperate to
regulate the response upon pheromone induction and to help preserving the
fidelity of the mating signaling. We explored factors affecting the
dose-response curves of this pathway and found that both negative feedback and
concentrations of the proteins involved in the MAPK cascade play crucial role.
Contrary to some other MAPK systems where signaling sensitivity is being
amplified successively along the cascade, here the mating signal is transmitted
through the cascade in an almost linear fashion.
