Receptor dimerization enables ligand discrimination through tunable response heterogeneity.

ABSTRACT: Signaling pathways enable cells to coordinate collective behaviors by exchanging specific information. Many pathways utilize multiple ligand variants to activate the same intracellular signaling cascade, raising the question of how cells discriminate between these seemingly redundant signals. It has been shown that individual cells can discriminate between signals based on their induced level of activity, temporal dynamics or combinatorial effect. Here, we demonstrate that ligand discrimination could also emerge at the population level. Using mathematical models of ligand-receptor interactions, we examine how response heterogeneity at the population level can encode ligand identity. We introduce a local scaling metric to quantify how variation in pathway components affects the cellular res

SUBMITTER: Biran A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12688120 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature