Hi
I am a MSc student of control engineering at Control and Intelligent Processing Center of Excellence-School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
I'm working on the modeling and simulation of brain lesion dynamics in multiple sclerosis as my final thesis.I'm trying to get familiar with medical texts, so please forgive me for my probable mistakes in asking my questions.
Here i am asking about the binding of the cytokines to their receptors on the cell surface. I've faced with texts like for example interleukin-12 binds to its receptor on T cells and initiates a change in the cell performance. I want to know that :
Is there a unique IL-12 receptor ( i mean one receptor ), or many IL-12 receptors that distributed on the cell surface? If there is many, how it is quantitated on the cell surface ( for example concentration of receptors on the cell surface) ?
Consider that the cell is exposed to 2 different kinds of cytokines with 2 different effects ( and maybe with opposite effects ),and the two cytokines are presented around the cell with the same concentrations. Which one will determine the final performance of the cell? Is there any kind of stochastic phenomenon that determine the final task of the cell ? Are the concentrations of receptors crucial for the fate of the cell? What will happen if we assume the case that the number of two different receptors ( or concentrations of them ) on the cell surface are also the same?
What do determine the High or Low affinity of the Receptor/cytokine binding? and does it play the crucial role for the fate of the cell ? what will happen if the affinities of the two different cytokines are exactly the same ?
I appreciate your taking the time to read or answer the questions.
