Architecture of Eph receptor clusters
- Cornell
Eph receptor tyrosine kinases and their ephrin ligands regulate cell navigation during normal and oncogenic development. Signaling of Ephs is initiated in a multistep process leading to the assembly of higher-order signaling clusters that set off bidirectional signaling in interacting cells. However, the structural and mechanistic details of this assembly remained undefined. Here we present high-resolution structures of the complete EphA2 ectodomain and complexes with ephrin-A1 and A5 as the base unit of an Eph cluster. The structures reveal an elongated architecture with novel Eph/Eph interactions, both within and outside of the Eph ligand-binding domain, that suggest the molecular mechanism underlying Eph/ephrin clustering. Structure-function analysis, by using site-directed mutagenesis and cell-based signaling assays, confirms the importance of the identified oligomerization interfaces for Eph clustering.
- Research Organization:
- Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States). Advanced Photon Source (APS)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- OSTI ID:
- 1002479
- Journal Information:
- Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 107, Issue (24) ; 06, 2010; ISSN 0027-8424
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- ENGLISH
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