New Tools for Studying Receptor Dimers

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Abstract Metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluRs) are class C G protein coupled receptors that function as dimers. While mGluRs are known to form homodimers, more recent work has shown that they can also heterodimerize, but not promiscuously. Because mGluRs exhibit widespread expression in the brain and regulate excitability and plasticity, they have become candidates as druggable targets for a variety of pathologies. To date however, excitement generated by preclinical data has not resulted in mGluR-targeting therapies in the clinic, despite a wealth of available ligands with good selectivity targeting these receptors. Our recent work examining mGluR2/4 heterodimers provides a possible explanation: ligands that are highly efficacious when targeting homodimeric receptors are often without effect when the same receptor is expressed as a heterodimer with another mGluR. Further complicating matters, these changes in pharmacological responses observed in mGluR2/4 heterodimers are not generalizable to all mGluR heterodimers, or even all mGluR2 containing heterodimers. Thus, to understand how any mGluR ligand will function in the brain, we must examine the pharmacological responses of each possible heterodimer pair in isolation. But this is complicated because every mGluR can also form homodimers, so any pair of expressed mGluR will have an unknown propensity to homo- and heterodimerize. To solve this problem, we have designed a novel dimer composition control system using a combination of ER retention sequences paired with orthogonal, split inteins, self-excising protein sequences, that will allow expression of pure populations of nearly wild type mGluR dimers of known composition. This system will be valuable not only in defining the pharmacological behavior of each dimer pair, but also by providing a broader and more accurate picture of the effects of mGluR targeting ligands by serving as a platform for broadly scoped drug screening. Further, this strategy provides a template for the study of other dimerizing membrane proteins. To this end, we will pursue the following Specific Aims: 1- Determine the performance and limitations of our novel eukaryotic split-intein system, and 2- Generate and test each mGluR combination with the split- intein system.