We report the crystal structure, at 2.5 A resolution, of a truncated human EGFR ectodomain bound to TGFalpha. TGFalpha interacts with both L1 and L2 domains of EGFR, making many main chain contacts with L1 and interacting with L2 via key conserved residues. The results indicate how EGFR family members can bind a family of highly variable ligands. In the 2:2 TGFalpha:sEGFR501 complex, each ligand interacts with only one receptor molecule. There are two types of dimers in the asymmetric unit: a head-to-head dimer involving contacts between the L1 and L2 domains and a back-to-back dimer dominated by interactions between the CR1 domains of each receptor. Based on sequence conservation, buried surface area, and mutagenesis experiments, the back-to-back dimer is favored to be biologically relevant.

The insulin receptor is a phylogenetically ancient tyrosine kinase receptor found in organisms as primitive as cnidarians and insects. In higher organisms it is essential for glucose homeostasis, whereas the closely related insulin-like growth factor receptor (IGF-1R) is involved in normal growth and development. The insulin receptor is expressed in two isoforms, IR-A and IR-B; the former also functions as a high-affinity receptor for IGF-II and is implicated, along with IGF-1R, in malignant transformation. Here we present the crystal structure at 3.8 A resolution of the IR-A ectodomain dimer, complexed with four Fabs from the monoclonal antibodies 83-7 and 83-14 (ref. 4), grown in the presence of a fragment of an insulin mimetic peptide. The structure reveals the domain arrangement in the disulphide-linked ectodomain dimer, showing that the insulin receptor adopts a folded-over conformation that places the ligand-binding regions in juxtaposition. This arrangement is very different from previous models. It shows that the two L1 domains are on opposite sides of the dimer, too far apart to allow insulin to bind both L1 domains simultaneously as previously proposed. Instead, the structure implicates the carboxy-terminal surface of the first fibronectin type III domain as the second binding site involved in high-affinity binding.

The insulin receptor (IR) and the type-1 insulin-like growth factor receptor (IGF1R) are homologous multidomain proteins that bind insulin and IGF with differing specificity. Here we report the crystal structure of the first three domains (L1-CR-L2) of human IR at 2.3 Å resolution and compare it with the previously determined structure of the corresponding fragment of IGF1R. The most important differences seen between the two receptors are in the two regions governing ligand specificity. The first is at the corner of the ligand-binding surface of the L1 domain, where the side chain of F39 in IR forms part of the ligand binding surface involving the second (central) ␤-sheet. This is very different to the location of its counterpart in IGF1R, S35, which is not involved in ligand binding. The second major difference is in the sixth module of the CR domain, where IR contains a larger loop that protrudes further into the ligand-binding pocket. This module, which governs IGF1-binding specificity, shows negligible sequence identity, significantly more ␣-helix, an additional disulfide bond, and opposite electrostatic potential compared to that of the IGF1R.crystal structure ͉ ectodomain ͉ insulin-binding site T he insulin receptor (IR), like the type-1 insulin-like growth factor receptor (IGF1R), is a member of the receptor tyrosine kinase family, and is a large, transmembrane, glycoprotein dimer consisting of several structural domains (1, 2). The N-terminal half of the ectodomain contains two leucine-rich repeat domains (L1 and L2) separated by a cys-rich region (CR) (1, 3). The C-terminal half of the IR ectodomain consists of three fibronectin type III domains, the second of which contains an insert region of Ϸ120 residues (1, 2).Although there is no high-resolution structural information available for the IR ectodomain, the three-dimensional structure is known for the first three domains (L1-CR-L2) of the closely related IGF1R (4). This structure has provided a framework to interpret previous studies on receptor chimeras, site-specific mutants, and mutants from patients with defective receptors (see refs. 1 and 2) and has guided subsequent studies on the insulin-binding site using mutational analysis (5, 6). Three regions of the ectodomain are known to be involved in low-affinity binding by the soluble IR ectodomain. These are the L1 domain, the CR region and the last 16 residues of the ␣-chain (see refs. 1 and 7). Of these, only the first two (L1 and the CR) are important determinants of ligand specificity, because IR͞IGF1R chimeras of whole receptors (8) or minireceptors (9) are little affected by swapping the regions that contained the last 16 residues of the ␣-chain.The major determinants in L1 for insulin binding specificity lie in the first 68 residues of this domain (10, 11), based on the analysis of receptor chimeras. Twelve residues in this N-terminal segment have been further confirmed as part of the ligand-binding region by site-specific mutagenesis (see Table 1). Surprisingly, nine of these 12 residues a...