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Updated: Mar 13, 2026

Identification of Post-translational Modifications of Plant Protein Complexes
Published on: February 22, 2014
Structural insights into ligand recognition and activation of plant receptor kinases
Wen Song1, Zhifu Han1, Jizong Wang1
1Innovation Center for Structural Biology, Tsinghua-Peking Joint Center for Life Sciences, School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
Abstract:
The large family of membrane-localized receptor kinases (RKs) has important roles in many aspects of plant physiology. RKs function to perceive external signals, leading to RK activation and downstream signaling. Progress has been recently made in structural elucidation of the mechanisms underlying ligand recognition and activation of RKs. These structural studies mainly on leucine-rich repeat RKs (LRR-RKs) support the idea that ligand-induced dimerization is an essential step for RK activation, though the modes for dimerization vary. Here we review the structural knowledge with an emphasis on the ligand recognition and activation mechanisms that are likely conserved in a subfamily of LRR-RKs.
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