Absolute Ligand Discrimination by Dimeric Signaling Receptors.
Many signaling pathways act through shared components, where different ligand molecules bind the same receptors or activate overlapping sets of response regulators downstream. Nevertheless, different ligands acting through cross-wired pathways often lead to different outcomes in terms of the target cell behavior and function. Although a number of mechanisms have been proposed, it still largely remains unclear how cells can reliably discriminate different molecular ligands under such circumstances. Here we show that signaling via ligand-induced receptor dimerization-a very common motif in cellular signaling-naturally incorporates a mechanism for the discrimination of ligands acting through the same receptor.
Physics Department, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
Sepehr
S
Fathi
Physics Department, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
Chitra R
CR
Nayak
Toronto Center for Liver Disease, Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network, Toronto, Canada.
Jordan J
JJ
Feld
Physics Department, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada; Institute for Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada. Electronic address: zilmana@physics.utoronto.ca.
Anton G
AG
Zilman
D008024:Ligands; D008958:Models, Molecular; D011485:Protein Binding; D055503:Protein Multimerization; D015398:Signal Transduction
D008024:Ligands