CYTOCON DB: A versatile database of human cell and molecule concentrations for accelerating model development

Heterodimers Are an Integral Component of Chemokine Signaling Repertoire

“…It has long been recognized that chemokines can form dimers, tetramers, or even higher-order oligomers [60,67,68,[71][72][73][74][75]. Initially, the oligomerization of chemokines was considered to have little biological relevance because the dimerization constants typically fell in the micromolar range [20,61,67,[71][72][73][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91], while average native chemokine concentrations were measured in the nanomolar range [78,[92][93][94]. Therefore, chemokine oligomerization was generally attributed to the experimental conditions in biophysical studies that necessitated high protein concentrations [37].…”

“…For example, CXCL4 and CXCL7 chemokines, which are stored in platelet α-granules, are released in large quantities into the plasma upon platelet activation [98,102]. Moreover, during inflammation, concentrations of certain chemokines increase to direct immune cell trafficking towards the inflammatory sites [93,94,[103][104][105][106][107]. As a result, the biological significance of chemokine homodimers and higher-order oligomers has gradually gained recognition [108][109][110][111].…”