Dimerization of Granulocyte-Colony Stimulating Factor Receptor: The Ig Plus CRH Construct of Granulocyte-Colony Stimulating Factor Receptor Forms a 2:2 Complex with a Ligand

We have previously shown that the extracellular domain of granulocyte-colony stimulat-ing factor receptor (soluble G-CSFR), prepared from CHO cell conditioned media, dimerizes upon binding its ligand, G-CSF. The most stable ligand-receptor complex occurs at a 2:2 stoichiometry, unlike the growth hormone and erythropoietin systems. In the latter cases, each ligand uses two binding sites to bring two receptors together. In this study, we have generated a truncated human G-CSF receptor, known to be sufficient for high affinity ligand binding, which consists of an Ig-like domain and a cytokine receptor homology module. With an affinity purified receptor, sedimentation equilibrium experiments clearly demon-strated that this truncated form of the receptor behaves very similarly to the entire extracellular domain. The sedimentation equilibrium data are consistent with the model that the truncated receptor has a weak tendency to self-associate into a dimer in the absence of a ligand, this receptor-receptor interaction is enhanced by ligand binding, and the most stable complex occurs at a 2:2 stoichiometry. These results are very different from those described by others for various murine G-CSF receptor constructs from either Escherichia coli or insect expression systems