Recent crystallographic studies have provided significant new insight into how receptor tyrosine kinases from the EGF receptor or ErbB family are regulated by their growth factor ligands. EGF receptor dimerization is mediated by a unique dimerization arm, which becomes exposed only after a dramatic domain rearrangement is promoted by growth factor binding. ErbB2, a family member that has no lig...

The ground state of a spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain with both frustration and long-range interactions is studied using Lanczos exact diagonalization. The evolution of the well-known dimerization transition of the system with short-range frustrated interactions (the J1-J2 chain) is investigated in the presence of additional unfrustrated interactions decaying with distance as 1/r(alpha). It is shown ...

The bZIP proteins Fos and Jun bind DNA rapidly and with high affinity, forming a heteromeric complex that mediates activated transcription. Here we use stopped-flow fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) to study the kinetic pathway by which Fos.Jun. DNA complexes assemble. Though dimerization of Fos and Jun occurs rapidly in the absence of DNA, the rate of dimerization is enhanced in th...