The expression of interferon-a (IFN-a) receptors was studied on a variety of human cells, using monoiodinated IFN-a2 probes. Steady-state binding at 4°C revealed a single class of non-interacting IFN receptor on peripheral blood lymphocytes, and tonsillar B lymphocytes, which are both known to be Go/G1 resting cell populations. The binding affinity of this class of receptor was found to be on the order of 5 x lo-'' M, expressed as an apparent dissociation constant (&). However, cells proliferating either in culture or in vivo were found to express a heterogeneity in IFN-cr2 binding. Such binding could be objectively resolved (by a version of the LIGAND program of P. Munson) into a two-site receptor model. Hill plots of binding to proliferating cells indicated a negative cooperativity in the interaction of IFN and receptor. The high-affinity component, expressed on proliferating cells, typically exhibits a Kd of (1 -10) x lo-" M, while the lower-affinity component indicates a Kd of (1 -10) x M. Furthermore, the low-affinity component is apparently expressed on the order of 10 -200 times the copy number, per cell, of the high-affinity site. Affinity-labeling experiments revealed that, in addition to the 140 -160-kDa IFN-binding complex reported by others, both the proliferating and non-proliferating cell populations possess a novel IFN-binding component of 60 kDa.The antiviral, antiproliferative and immunomodulating effects of interferons (IFNs) are mediated initially through the interaction of the interferon (a, jl or y type) with highaffinity plasma membrane receptors (reviewed in [l]). A number of studies using radiolabeled IFN-a, IFN-P and IFN-y suggest that IFN-a and IFN-P interact with a common cellular binding site, while IFN-y is recognized by a distinct receptor [2 -61. This conclusion is further supported by affinity-labeling experiments, which identify IFN-a-binding complexes of 140-160 kDa [4,7, 81, and IFN-y-binding complexes of about 110 kDa [6, 91, Similarities are evident in a comparison of the receptor interactions of many polypeptide hormones and growth factors, and the interaction of IFNs with their receptors. These similarities include ligand-induced down-regulation of receptors [S, 12, Recently we described a regulatory feature of IFN-a binding to human lymphoblastoid cells, which is consistent with a model of negative cooperativity [13] as originally described by DeMeyts for insulin -receptor interaction [17]. Heterogeneous binding, in the form of biphasic Scatchard plots of IFN-cr binding to Daudi lymphoblastoid cells, correlated with dissociation kinetics descriptive of negative cooperativity, also observed in a number of hormone receptor systems (see [18]). Further to this finding we now report that heterogeneous binding of IFN-a to human cells seems to be a function of receptor expression on actively proliferating cells, as opposed to non-proliferating cells, which exhibit homogeneous, noncooperative IFN-a binding over the range of ligand employed. Analysis of binding data by the LIGA...