Chemokines ligand structure

Chemokines are small chemotactic cytokines that act as important messenger molecules between cells of the immune system. Chemokines produce their effects by activating a family of G-protein-coupled receptors. Chemokine receptors are all seven-transmembrane glycoproteins that are structurally related. They may be characterized into those that bind to specific ligands, or those that bind several chemokine ligands. There are also virally encoded (viral) chemokine receptors that represent shared receptors that have been transduced into the viral genome during evolutionary history (Premack and SchaU 1996). 

There are > 50 known chemokines and > 20 chemokine receptors. Many have multiple traditional names, leading to confusion. This necessitated the need for a systematic nomenclature for chemokine ligands and chemokine receptors (27). The chemokine ligands are defined as CXC, CC, XC, and CX3C followed by L (ligand) and a number. The chemokine receptors are defined by the same structure-related acronyms followed by R (receptor) and a number (27) [see Chap. 1 (27)]. 

The structural elements involved in the binding of chemokine ligands to chemokine receptors have been mainly obtained from mutational analyses [23]. The N-loop... 

The Structural Basis for Ligand Recognition by Chemokine Receptors... 

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