Structural analysis of vascular endothelial growth factor receptor-2/ligand complexes by small-angle X-ray solution scattering.

Receptor tyrosine kinases play essential roles in tissue development and homeostasis, and aberrant signaling by these molecules is the basis of many diseases. Understanding the activation mechanism of these receptors is thus of high clinical relevance. We investigated vascular endothelial growth factors (VEGFs) and their receptors (VEGFRs), which regulate blood and lymph vessel formation. We analyzed the structural changes in the extracellular receptor domain that were induced by ligand binding and that represent the initial step in transmembrane signaling, culminating in the activation of the intracellular receptor kinase domain. High-resolution structural information for the ligand binding domain became available recently, but the flexibility of the extracellular domain and inhomogeneous glycosylation of VEGFRs have prevented the production of highly diffracting crystals of the entire extracellular domain so far. Therefore, we chose to further investigate VEGFR structure by small-angle X-ray scattering in solution (SAXS). SAXS data were combined with independent distance restraint determination obtained by mass spectrometric analysis of chemically cross-linked ligand/receptor complexes. With these data, we constructed a structural model of the entire extracellular receptor domain in the unbound form and in complex with VEGF.