{"title":"Epidermal growth factor and transforming growth factor-alpha: differential intracellular routing and processing of ligand-receptor complexes.","authors":"R Ebner, R Derynck","doi":"10.1091/mbc.2.8.599","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Two structurally related but different polypeptide growth factors, epidermal growth factor (EGF) and transforming growth factor-alpha (TGF-alpha), exert their activities after interaction with a common cell-surface EGF/TGF-alpha-receptor. Comparative studies of the effects of both ligands have established that TGF-alpha is more potent than EGF in a variety of biological systems. This observation is not explained by differences in affinities of the ligands for the receptor, because the affinity-constants of both factors are very similar. We have compared the intracellular processing of ligand-receptor complexes using either EGF or TGF-alpha in two different cell systems. We found that TGF-alpha dissociates from the EGF/TGF-alpha-receptor at much higher pH than EGF, which may reflect the substantial difference in the calculated isoelectric points. After internalization, the intracellular TGF-alpha is more rapidly cleared than EGF, and a substantial portion of the released TGF-alpha represents undegraded TGF-alpha in contrast to the mostly degraded EGF. In addition, TGF-alpha did not induce a complete down-regulation of cell surface receptors, as observed with EGF, which is at least in part responsible for a much sooner recovery of the ligand-binding ability after down-regulation, in the case of TGF-alpha. These differences in processing of the ligand-receptor complexes may explain why TGF-alpha exerts quantitatively higher activities than EGF.</p>","PeriodicalId":9671,"journal":{"name":"Cell regulation","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"1991-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1091/mbc.2.8.599","citationCount":"224","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Cell regulation","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1091/mbc.2.8.599","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 224
Abstract
Two structurally related but different polypeptide growth factors, epidermal growth factor (EGF) and transforming growth factor-alpha (TGF-alpha), exert their activities after interaction with a common cell-surface EGF/TGF-alpha-receptor. Comparative studies of the effects of both ligands have established that TGF-alpha is more potent than EGF in a variety of biological systems. This observation is not explained by differences in affinities of the ligands for the receptor, because the affinity-constants of both factors are very similar. We have compared the intracellular processing of ligand-receptor complexes using either EGF or TGF-alpha in two different cell systems. We found that TGF-alpha dissociates from the EGF/TGF-alpha-receptor at much higher pH than EGF, which may reflect the substantial difference in the calculated isoelectric points. After internalization, the intracellular TGF-alpha is more rapidly cleared than EGF, and a substantial portion of the released TGF-alpha represents undegraded TGF-alpha in contrast to the mostly degraded EGF. In addition, TGF-alpha did not induce a complete down-regulation of cell surface receptors, as observed with EGF, which is at least in part responsible for a much sooner recovery of the ligand-binding ability after down-regulation, in the case of TGF-alpha. These differences in processing of the ligand-receptor complexes may explain why TGF-alpha exerts quantitatively higher activities than EGF.