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arXiv · cond-mat/9908106

A Thermodynamic Model for Receptor Clustering

Chinlin Guo·Herbert Levine
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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 affects the signal transduction. Recent investigations have revealed the molecular basis of receptor-receptor interactions, but a simple theoretical framework for using this 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 regarding the robustness of the cellular signaling response.

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Chinlin Guo, Herbert Levine. 1999-08-06. A Thermodynamic Model for Receptor Clustering. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0006-3495(99)77073-6

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