Hi Arun, probably the articles made reference to the balance between phosphorylated/non-phosphorylated forms of these proteins. For instance, you would expect that the total amount of Akt to be similar among the conditions you test, but the level of phosphorylated Akt could be modified (increase or decrease) by the treatment you are testing depending on the signalling pathway you are affecting. If total amount of Akt is not the same between your control condition and the tested conditions then you will be talking about something happening upstream in the process, at the protein's expression level itself.

thanks