1. Academic Validation
  2. Structural Basis of the Diversity of Adrenergic Receptors

Structural Basis of the Diversity of Adrenergic Receptors

  • Cell Rep. 2019 Dec 3;29(10):2929-2935.e4. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2019.10.088.
Lu Qu 1 Qingtong Zhou 2 Yueming Xu 2 Yu Guo 3 Xiaoyu Chen 3 Deqiang Yao 2 Gye Won Han 4 Zhi-Jie Liu 3 Raymond C Stevens 5 Guisheng Zhong 6 Dong Wu 7 Suwen Zhao 8
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 iHuman Institute, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai 201210, China; National Laboratory of Biomacromolecules, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
  • 2 iHuman Institute, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai 201210, China.
  • 3 iHuman Institute, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai 201210, China; School of Life Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai 201210, China.
  • 4 Departments of Biological Sciences and Chemistry, Bridge Institute, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA.
  • 5 iHuman Institute, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai 201210, China; Departments of Biological Sciences and Chemistry, Bridge Institute, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA.
  • 6 iHuman Institute, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai 201210, China; School of Life Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai 201210, China. Electronic address: zhongsh@shanghaitech.edu.cn.
  • 7 iHuman Institute, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai 201210, China. Electronic address: wudong@shanghaitech.edu.cn.
  • 8 iHuman Institute, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai 201210, China; School of Life Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai 201210, China. Electronic address: zhaosw@shanghaitech.edu.cn.
Abstract

Adrenergic receptors are highly homologous while at the same time display a wide diversity of ligand and G-protein binding, and understanding this diversity is key for designing selective or biased drugs for them. Here, we determine two crystal structures of the α2A Adrenergic Receptor2AAR) in complex with a partial agonist and an antagonist. Key non-conserved residues from the ligand-binding pocket (Phe7.39 and Tyr6.55) to G-protein coupling region (Ile34.51 and Lys34.56) are discovered to play a key role in the interplay between partial agonism and biased signaling of α2AAR, which provides insights into the diversity of ligand binding and G-protein coupling preference of adrenergic receptors and lays the foundation for the discovery of next-generation drugs targeting these receptors.

Keywords

GPCR; biased signaling; partial agonism; α(2A) adrenergic receptor.

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