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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2016 Jan 1.
Published in final edited form as: Bioessays. 2014 Dec 5;37(1):25–33. doi: 10.1002/bies.201400122

Figure 3.

Figure 3

Diffusion and cytoneme models of TGF-β dispersion. Drawings depict TGF-β (purple + orange cylinder) that is synthesized and processed into mature peptide (orange circle) that is inactive while bound with latent associated peptide (LAP, purple) and latent TGF-β binding protein (LTBP, red). A: Dispersion by diffusion predicts that inactive LAP-bound TGF-β that is secreted as extracellular protein binds to ECM and that release from the ECM initiates the process of activation that involves binding to integrin (red cylinder) and receptor (green cylinders). B: The cytoneme model predicts that LAP-bound TGF-β disperses as an external but not extracellular protein and that release occurs only upon binding to integrin and receptor.