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. 2017 Nov 13;7:15389. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-15258-z

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© The Author(s) 2017

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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A theoretical example of receptor activation through two different pathways. In the panel on the left it is represented the concentration-response curve of three agonists for a given receptor acting through Pathway 1. In the panel on the right, concentration-response curves are represented for the same agonists acting through Pathway 2. For the sake of clarity, the three agonists show the same effect in Pathway 1 while different behaviors are exerted through Pathway 2. Concentration is the key: Two concentrations are marked (C1 and C2). For both concentrations and in pathway 1, all three ligands show the same response. In pathway 2, differences appear. At concentration C1 the effect observed for agonist 3 is larger than that observed with the two other ligands. However, at concentration C2, the effect of agonist 3 remains greater than that of agonist 1 but smaller than that observed for agonist 2.