Cooperativity transitions driven by higher-order oligomer formations in ligand-induced receptor dimerization

Abstract

While cooperativity in ligand-induced receptor dimerization has been linked with receptor-receptor couplings via minimal representations of physical observables, effects arising from higher-order oligomer (e.g., trimer and tetramer) formations of unobserved receptors have received less attention. Here, we propose a dimerization model of ligand-induced receptors in multivalent form representing physical observables under basis vectors of various aggregated receptor-states. Our simulations of multivalent models not only reject Wofsy-Goldstein parameter conditions for cooperativity, but show higher-order oligomer formations can shift cooperativity from positive to negative.