The structural basis of the biological actions of the GM-CSF receptor

Abstract

The receptor for granulocyte/macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) consists of a ligand-specific low-affinity binding chain (GM-CSFRα) and a second chain that is required for high-affinity binding and signal transduction. This second chain is shared by the ligand-specific α-chains for the interleukin 3 (IL-3) and IL-5 receptors and is therefore called β common (βc). In mice but not humans the IL-3 receptor can also use a closely related but IL-3-specific β-chain (βIL-3). In order to define the contributions of each chain to receptor signalling we generated mice in which either βc or βIL-3 expression was deleted. βIL-3 null mice were phenotypically normal but displayed a decreased res..