Biophys J, November 1999, p. 2358-2365, Vol. 77, No. 5

A Thermodynamic Model for Receptor Clustering

Department of Physics, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093-0319 USA

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.

Biophys J, November 1999, p. 2358-2365, Vol. 77, No. 5
© 1999 by the Biophysical Society   0006-3495/99/11/2358/08  $2.00

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