Fig. 7.

It has been found that some members of TNFR superfamily can pre-assemble into dimers on cell surfaces prior to their ligand binding. In order to understand the mechanism and functions of this pre-assembly, we turned on the cis-interactions between ligand-unbound TNFR monomers in addition to the cis-interactions between ligand-bound receptor complexes. As a result, three different binding affinities of monomer cis-interactions were tested and all other parameters were fixed in these three systems. In (a), we plot the number of trans-interactions formed in these three simulation scenarios. In (b), we plot the number of cis-interactions between monomeric receptors formed in these three simulation scenarios. In (c), we plot the largest size of oligomer formed in these three simulation scenarios.