The Thyrotropin Receptor in Thyroid Diseases

Abstract
The growth and function of the thyroid are controlled by thyrotropin1 through the activation of its receptor, which belongs to the large family of G protein–coupled receptors. Despite the extreme diversity of their ligands, all receptors from this family have a common molecular architecture: seven transmembrane segments, three extracellular loops, three intracellular loops, an extracellular amino terminal, and an intracytoplasmic carboxy terminal (Figure 1). The glycoprotein hormone receptors constitute a subfamily that is characterized mainly by a particularly long amino-terminal extracellular domain that confers binding specificity.1,21 The thyrotropin receptor is encoded by 10 exons spread over 58 kilobases on . . .

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