title: A thermodynamic model for receptor clustering.
abstract: Intracellular signaling often arises from ligand-induced oligomerization of cell surface receptors. This oligomerization or clustering process is fundamentally a cooperative behavior between near-neighbor receptor molecules; the properties of this cooperative process clearly affect the signal transduction. Recent investigations have revealed the molecular basis of receptor-receptor interactions, but a simple theoretical framework for using these data to predict cluster formation has been lacking. Here, we propose a simple, coarse-grained, phenomenological model for ligand-modulated receptor interactions and discuss its equilibrium properties via mean-field theory. The existence of a first-order transition for this model has immediate implications for the robustness of the cellular signaling response.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093-0319, USA.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Levine
mesh_terms: D004058:Diffusion; D007700:Kinetics; D008024:Ligands; D008958:Models, Molecular; D009010:Monte Carlo Method; D011485:Protein Binding; D055503:Protein Multimerization; D020836:Protein Structure, Quaternary; D047888:Receptors, Tumor Necrosis Factor, Type I / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism*; D015398:Signal Transduction; D013816:Thermodynamics
chemical_list: D008024:Ligands; D047888:Receptors, Tumor Necrosis Factor, Type I