Structures and recognition modes of toll‐like receptors

Toll-like receptors (TLRs) recognize common structural patterns in diverse microbial molecules and play central roles in the innate immune response. The structures of extracellular domains and their ligand complexes of several TLRs have been determined by X-ray crystallography. Here, we discuss recent advances on structures and activation mechanisms of TLRs. Despite the differences in interaction areas of ligand with TLRs, the extracellular domains of TLRs all adopt horseshoe-shaped structures and the overall M-shape of the TLR-ligand complexes is strikingly similar. The structural rearrangement information of TLRs sheds new light on their ligand-recognition and -activation mechanisms. Proteins 2016; 85:3-9.