Probing receptor-ligand interactions by sedimentation equilibrium

While sedimentation equilibrium is most commonly used to characterize the molecular weight and state of association of single proteins, this technique is also a very powerful tool-for probing the interactions between two or more different proteins (for example, antibody/antigen or receptor/ligand pairs), and can characterize both the binding stoichiometry and the equilibrium constants. To resolve the complex binding interactions that can occur in such systems, it is crucial to globally fit data from many experiments to a common binding model, including samples made with different mixing ratios and a wide range of total concentration. It is often also essential to constrain the parameters during fitting so that the fits correctly reproduce the molar ratio of proteins used in making each sample. We have applied this methodology to probe mechanisms of receptor activation for a number of hematopoietic receptors and their cognate ligands, using receptor extracellular domains expressed as soluble proteins. Such data can potentially help in the design of improved or new protein therapeutics, as well as in efforts to create small-molecule mimetics of protein hormones through structure-based drug design. Sedimentation equilibrium has shown that stem cell factor (SCF), erythropoietin (EPO), and granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (G-CSF) can each dimerize their respective receptors in solution, but the mechanisms of ligand-induced receptor dimerization for these three systems are strikingly different.