Open AccessHarmonic oscillator model of the insulin and IGF1 receptors’ allosteric binding and activation
Author(s) -
Kiselyov Vladislav V,
Versteyhe Soetkin,
Gauguin Lisbeth,
De Meyts Pierre
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
molecular systems biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 8.523
H-Index - 148
ISSN - 1744-4292
DOI - 10.1038/msb.2008.78
Subject(s) - allosteric regulation , biology , insulin receptor , receptor , harmonic oscillator , insulin , microbiology and biotechnology , computational biology , biochemistry , endocrinology , physics , insulin resistance , quantum mechanics
The insulin and insulin‐like growth factor 1 receptors activate overlapping signalling pathways that are critical for growth, metabolism, survival and longevity. Their mechanism of ligand binding and activation displays complex allosteric properties, which no mathematical model has been able to account for. Modelling these receptors’ binding and activation in terms of interactions between the molecular components is problematical due to many unknown biochemical and structural details. Moreover, substantial combinatorial complexity originating from multivalent ligand binding further complicates the problem. On the basis of the available structural and biochemical information, we develop a physically plausible model of the receptor binding and activation, which is based on the concept of a harmonic oscillator. Modelling a network of interactions among all possible receptor intermediaries arising in the context of the model (35, for the insulin receptor) accurately reproduces for the first time all the kinetic properties of the receptor, and provides unique and robust estimates of the kinetic parameters. The harmonic oscillator model may be adaptable for many other dimeric/dimerizing receptor tyrosine kinases, cytokine receptors and G‐protein‐coupled receptors where ligand crosslinking occurs.