Single-molecule functional anatomy of endogenous HER2-HER3 heterodimers
Abstract
Human epidermal growth factor receptors (HERs) are the primary targets of many directed cancer therapies. However, the reason a specific dimer of HERs generates a stronger proliferative signal than other permutations remains unclear. Here, we used single-molecule immunoprecipitation to develop a biochemical assay for endogenously-formed, entire HER2-HER3 heterodimers. We observed unexpected, large conformational fluctuations in juxta-membrane and kinase domains of the HER2-HER3 heterodimer. Nevertheless, the individual HER2-HER3 heterodimers catalyze tyrosine phosphorylation at an unusually high rate, while simultaneously interacting with multiple copies of downstream signaling effectors. Our results suggest that the high catalytic rate and multi-tasking capability make a concerted contribution to the strong signaling potency of the HER2-HER3 heterodimers.
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All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files
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Funding
National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2011-0018352)
- Tae-Young Yoon
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2020, Choi et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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