Architecture of Eph receptor clusters.
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Himanen JP, Yermekbayeva L, Janes PW, Walker JR, Xu K, Atapattu L, Rajashankar KR, Mensinga A, Lackmann M, Nikolov DB, Dhe-Paganon S
Architecture of Eph receptor clusters.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2010 Jun 15;107(24):10860-5. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1004148107. Epub 2010 May 26.
- PubMed ID
- 20505120 [ View in PubMed]
- Abstract
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.