Size and conformational features of ErbB2 and ErbB3 receptors: a TEM and DLS comparative study

ErbB2 and ErbB3 receptors belong to the epidermal growth factor receptor family. The members of this family are able to form homo- and heterodimers that trigger diverse downstream signalling concerned to multiple cellular events. In the absence of a ligand, ErbB3 adopts a characteristic tethered conformation, which differs from ErbB2 extended conformation. In this work, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and dynamic light scattering (DLS) have been used to characterize the conformational features and the size of ErBb2 and ErbB3 receptors. Two main objectives are presented. The first one is to evaluate the use of TEM as a tool for structural studies for this family of receptors. The low molecular weight of these proteins represents a challenging purpose for TEM studies. The other one is to search for a relationship between the results obtained by TEM and those obtained for the hydrodynamic size measured by DLS. This comparison has allowed us to identify the conformational differences of the receptors and to anticipate the use of these experimental techniques for the study of the ligand activated heterodimerization, a process related to a significant number of human malignancies.