1
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Lopez-Balastegui M, Stepniewski TM, Kogut-Günthel MM, Di Pizio A, Rosenkilde MM, Mao J, Selent J. Relevance of G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) dynamics for receptor activation, signalling bias and allosteric modulation. Br J Pharmacol 2024. [PMID: 38978399 DOI: 10.1111/bph.16495] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/21/2024] [Revised: 04/22/2024] [Accepted: 05/23/2024] [Indexed: 07/10/2024] Open
Abstract
G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are one of the major drug targets. In recent years, computational drug design for GPCRs has mainly focused on static structures obtained through X-ray crystallography, cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) or in silico modelling as a starting point for virtual screening campaigns. However, GPCRs are highly flexible entities with the ability to adopt different conformational states that elicit different physiological responses. Including this knowledge in the drug discovery pipeline can help to tailor novel conformation-specific drugs with an improved therapeutic profile. In this review, we outline our current knowledge about GPCR dynamics that is relevant for receptor activation, signalling bias and allosteric modulation. Ultimately, we highlight new technological implementations such as time-resolved X-ray crystallography and cryo-EM as well as computational algorithms that can contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of receptor dynamics and its relevance for GPCR functionality.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marta Lopez-Balastegui
- Research Programme on Biomedical Informatics (GRIB), Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute & Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain
| | - Tomasz Maciej Stepniewski
- Research Programme on Biomedical Informatics (GRIB), Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute & Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain
- InterAx Biotech AG, Villigen, Switzerland
| | | | - Antonella Di Pizio
- Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich, Freising, Germany
- Chair for Chemoinformatics and Protein Modelling, Department of Molecular Life Science, School of Science, Technical University of Munich, Freising, Germany
| | - Mette Marie Rosenkilde
- Department of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences University of Copenhagen, København N, Denmark
| | - Jiafei Mao
- Huairou Research Center, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
| | - Jana Selent
- Research Programme on Biomedical Informatics (GRIB), Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute & Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain
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2
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Nguyen ATN, Nguyen DTN, Koh HY, Toskov J, MacLean W, Xu A, Zhang D, Webb GI, May LT, Halls ML. The application of artificial intelligence to accelerate G protein-coupled receptor drug discovery. Br J Pharmacol 2024; 181:2371-2384. [PMID: 37161878 DOI: 10.1111/bph.16140] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/26/2022] [Revised: 04/14/2023] [Accepted: 04/27/2023] [Indexed: 05/11/2023] Open
Abstract
The application of artificial intelligence (AI) approaches to drug discovery for G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) is a rapidly expanding area. Artificial intelligence can be used at multiple stages during the drug discovery process, from aiding our understanding of the fundamental actions of GPCRs to the discovery of new ligand-GPCR interactions or the prediction of clinical responses. Here, we provide an overview of the concepts behind artificial intelligence, including the subfields of machine learning and deep learning. We summarise the published applications of artificial intelligence to different stages of the GPCR drug discovery process. Finally, we reflect on the benefits and limitations of artificial intelligence and share our vision for the exciting potential for further development of applications to aid GPCR drug discovery. In addition to making the drug discovery process "faster, smarter and cheaper," we anticipate that the application of artificial intelligence will create exciting new opportunities for GPCR drug discovery. LINKED ARTICLES: This article is part of a themed issue Therapeutic Targeting of G Protein-Coupled Receptors: hot topics from the Australasian Society of Clinical and Experimental Pharmacologists and Toxicologists 2021 Virtual Annual Scientific Meeting. To view the other articles in this section visit http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bph.v181.14/issuetoc.
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Affiliation(s)
- Anh T N Nguyen
- Drug Discovery Biology Theme, Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
| | - Diep T N Nguyen
- Department of Information Technology, Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Vietnam National University, Cau Giay, Hanoi, Vietnam
| | - Huan Yee Koh
- Drug Discovery Biology Theme, Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
- Monash Data Futures Institute and Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia
| | - Jason Toskov
- Monash DeepNeuron, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia
| | - William MacLean
- Monash DeepNeuron, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia
| | - Andrew Xu
- Monash DeepNeuron, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia
| | - Daokun Zhang
- Drug Discovery Biology Theme, Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
- Monash Data Futures Institute and Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia
| | - Geoffrey I Webb
- Monash Data Futures Institute and Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia
| | - Lauren T May
- Drug Discovery Biology Theme, Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
| | - Michelle L Halls
- Drug Discovery Biology Theme, Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
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3
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Bhattacharjee A, Kar S, Ojha PK. Unveiling G-protein coupled receptor kinase-5 inhibitors for chronic degenerative diseases: Multilayered prioritization employing explainable machine learning-driven multi-class QSAR, ligand-based pharmacophore and free energy-inspired molecular simulation. Int J Biol Macromol 2024; 269:131784. [PMID: 38697440 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2024.131784] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/24/2024] [Revised: 04/02/2024] [Accepted: 04/21/2024] [Indexed: 05/05/2024]
Abstract
GRK5 holds a pivotal role in cellular signaling pathways, with its overexpression in cardiomyocytes, neuronal cells, and tumor cells strongly associated with various chronic degenerative diseases, which highlights the urgent need for potential inhibitors. In this study, multiclass classification-based QSAR models were developed using diverse machine learning algorithms. These models were built from curated compounds with experimentally derived GRK5 inhibitory activity. Additionally, a pharmacophore model was constructed using active compounds from the dataset. Among the models, the SVM-based approach proved most effective and was initially used to screen DrugBank compounds within the applicability domain. Compounds showing significant GRK5 inhibitory potential underwent evaluation for key pharmacophoric features. Prospective compounds were subjected to molecular docking to assess binding affinity towards GRK5's key active site amino acid residues. Stability at the binding site was analyzed through 200 ns molecular dynamics simulations. MM-GBSA analysis quantified individual free energy components contributing to the total binding energy with respect to binding site residues. Metadynamics analysis, including PCA, FEL, and PDF, provided crucial insights into conformational changes of both apo and holo forms of GRK5 at defined energy states. The study identifies DB02844 (S-Adenosyl-1,8-Diamino-3-Thiooctane) and DB13155 (Esculin) as promising GRK5 inhibitors, warranting further in vitro and in vivo validation studies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Arnab Bhattacharjee
- Drug Discovery and Development Laboratory (DDD Lab), Department of Pharmaceutical Technology, Jadavpur University, Kolkata 700032, India
| | - Supratik Kar
- Chemometrics and Molecular Modeling Laboratory, Department of Chemistry and Physics, Kean University, 1000 Morris Avenue, Union, NJ, 07083, USA
| | - Probir Kumar Ojha
- Drug Discovery and Development Laboratory (DDD Lab), Department of Pharmaceutical Technology, Jadavpur University, Kolkata 700032, India.
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4
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Kim S, Mollaei P, Antony A, Magar R, Barati Farimani A. GPCR-BERT: Interpreting Sequential Design of G Protein-Coupled Receptors Using Protein Language Models. J Chem Inf Model 2024; 64:1134-1144. [PMID: 38340054 PMCID: PMC10900288 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jcim.3c01706] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/22/2023] [Revised: 01/29/2024] [Accepted: 01/29/2024] [Indexed: 02/12/2024]
Abstract
With the rise of transformers and large language models (LLMs) in chemistry and biology, new avenues for the design and understanding of therapeutics have been opened up to the scientific community. Protein sequences can be modeled as language and can take advantage of recent advances in LLMs, specifically with the abundance of our access to the protein sequence data sets. In this letter, we developed the GPCR-BERT model for understanding the sequential design of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). GPCRs are the target of over one-third of Food and Drug Administration-approved pharmaceuticals. However, there is a lack of comprehensive understanding regarding the relationship among amino acid sequence, ligand selectivity, and conformational motifs (such as NPxxY, CWxP, and E/DRY). By utilizing the pretrained protein model (Prot-Bert) and fine-tuning with prediction tasks of variations in the motifs, we were able to shed light on several relationships between residues in the binding pocket and some of the conserved motifs. To achieve this, we took advantage of attention weights and hidden states of the model that are interpreted to extract the extent of contributions of amino acids in dictating the type of masked ones. The fine-tuned models demonstrated high accuracy in predicting hidden residues within the motifs. In addition, the analysis of embedding was performed over 3D structures to elucidate the higher-order interactions within the conformations of the receptors.
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Affiliation(s)
- Seongwon Kim
- Department
of Chemical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon
University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, United States
| | - Parisa Mollaei
- Department
of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon
University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, United States
| | - Akshay Antony
- Department
of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon
University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, United States
| | - Rishikesh Magar
- Department
of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon
University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, United States
| | - Amir Barati Farimani
- Department
of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon
University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, United States
- Department
of Biomedical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon
University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, United States
- Machine
Learning Department, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, United States
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5
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Velloso JPL, Kovacs AS, Pires DEV, Ascher DB. AI-driven GPCR analysis, engineering, and targeting. Curr Opin Pharmacol 2024; 74:102427. [PMID: 38219398 DOI: 10.1016/j.coph.2023.102427] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/26/2023] [Revised: 12/12/2023] [Accepted: 12/13/2023] [Indexed: 01/16/2024]
Abstract
This article investigates the role of recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to revolutionise the study of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). AI has been applied to many areas of GPCR research, including the application of machine learning (ML) in GPCR classification, prediction of GPCR activation levels, modelling GPCR 3D structures and interactions, understanding G-protein selectivity, aiding elucidation of GPCRs structures, and drug design. Despite progress, challenges in predicting GPCR structures and addressing the complex nature of GPCRs remain, providing avenues for future research and development.
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Affiliation(s)
- João P L Velloso
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry and Pharmacology, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
| | - Aaron S Kovacs
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
| | - Douglas E V Pires
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry and Pharmacology, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; School of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
| | - David B Ascher
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry and Pharmacology, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
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6
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Huang WC, Lin WT, Hung MS, Lee JC, Tung CW. Decrypting orphan GPCR drug discovery via multitask learning. J Cheminform 2024; 16:10. [PMID: 38263092 PMCID: PMC10804799 DOI: 10.1186/s13321-024-00806-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/28/2023] [Accepted: 01/18/2024] [Indexed: 01/25/2024] Open
Abstract
The drug discovery of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) superfamily using computational models is often limited by the availability of protein three-dimensional (3D) structures and chemicals with experimentally measured bioactivities. Orphan GPCRs without known ligands further complicate the process. To enable drug discovery for human orphan GPCRs, multitask models were proposed for predicting half maximal effective concentrations (EC50) of the pairs of chemicals and GPCRs. Protein multiple sequence alignment features, and physicochemical properties and fingerprints of chemicals were utilized to encode the protein and chemical information, respectively. The protein features enabled the transfer of data-rich GPCRs to orphan receptors and the transferability based on the similarity of protein features. The final model was trained using both agonist and antagonist data from 200 GPCRs and showed an excellent mean squared error (MSE) of 0.24 in the validation dataset. An independent test using the orphan dataset consisting of 16 receptors associated with less than 8 bioactivities showed a reasonably good MSE of 1.51 that can be further improved to 0.53 by considering the transferability based on protein features. The informative features were identified and mapped to corresponding 3D structures to gain insights into the mechanism of GPCR-ligand interactions across the GPCR family. The proposed method provides a novel perspective on learning ligand bioactivity within the diverse human GPCR superfamily and can potentially accelerate the discovery of therapeutic agents for orphan GPCRs.
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Affiliation(s)
- Wei-Cheng Huang
- Institute of Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Research, National Health Research Institutes, Miaoli County, 35053, Taiwan
| | - Wei-Ting Lin
- Institute of Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Research, National Health Research Institutes, Miaoli County, 35053, Taiwan
| | - Ming-Shiu Hung
- Institute of Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Research, National Health Research Institutes, Miaoli County, 35053, Taiwan
| | - Jinq-Chyi Lee
- Institute of Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Research, National Health Research Institutes, Miaoli County, 35053, Taiwan
| | - Chun-Wei Tung
- Institute of Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Research, National Health Research Institutes, Miaoli County, 35053, Taiwan.
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7
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Buyanov I, Popov P. Characterizing conformational states in GPCR structures using machine learning. Sci Rep 2024; 14:1098. [PMID: 38212515 PMCID: PMC10784458 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-47698-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/10/2023] [Accepted: 11/17/2023] [Indexed: 01/13/2024] Open
Abstract
G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) play a pivotal role in signal transduction and represent attractive targets for drug development. Recent advances in structural biology have provided insights into GPCR conformational states, which are critical for understanding their signaling pathways and facilitating structure-based drug discovery. In this study, we introduce a machine learning approach for conformational state annotation of GPCRs. We represent GPCR conformations as high-dimensional feature vectors, incorporating information about amino acid residue pairs involved in the activation pathway. Using a dataset of GPCR conformations in inactive and active states obtained through molecular dynamics simulations, we trained machine learning models to distinguish between inactive-like and active-like conformations. The developed model provides interpretable predictions and can be used for the large-scale analysis of molecular dynamics trajectories of GPCRs.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ilya Buyanov
- iMolecule, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, Moscow, 121205, Russia
| | - Petr Popov
- iMolecule, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, Moscow, 121205, Russia.
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8
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Mollaei P, Barati Farimani A. Unveiling Switching Function of Amino Acids in Proteins Using a Machine Learning Approach. J Chem Theory Comput 2023; 19:8472-8480. [PMID: 37933128 PMCID: PMC10688191 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jctc.3c00665] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/18/2023] [Revised: 10/13/2023] [Accepted: 10/16/2023] [Indexed: 11/08/2023]
Abstract
Dynamics of individual amino acids play key roles in the overall properties of proteins. However, the knowledge of protein structural features at the residue level is limited due to the current resolutions of experimental and computational techniques. To address this issue, we designed a novel machine-learning (ML) framework that uses Molecular Dynamics (MD) trajectories to identify the major conformational states of individual amino acids, classify amino acids switching between two distinct modes, and evaluate their degree of dynamic stability. The Random Forest model achieved 96.94% classification accuracy in identifying switch residues within proteins. Additionally, our framework distinguishes between the stable switch (SS) residues, which remain stable in one angular state and jump once to another state during protein dynamics, and unstable switch (US) residues, which constantly fluctuate between the two angular states. This study also illustrates the correlation between the dynamics of SS residues and the protein's global properties.
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Affiliation(s)
- Parisa Mollaei
- Department
of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon
University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, United States
| | - Amir Barati Farimani
- Department
of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon
University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, United States
- Department
of Biomedical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon
University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, United States
- Machine
Learning Department, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, United States
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9
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Guntuboina C, Das A, Mollaei P, Kim S, Barati Farimani A. PeptideBERT: A Language Model Based on Transformers for Peptide Property Prediction. J Phys Chem Lett 2023; 14:10427-10434. [PMID: 37956397 PMCID: PMC10683064 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.3c02398] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/27/2023] [Revised: 11/04/2023] [Accepted: 11/07/2023] [Indexed: 11/15/2023]
Abstract
Recent advances in language models have enabled the protein modeling community with a powerful tool that uses transformers to represent protein sequences as text. This breakthrough enables a sequence-to-property prediction for peptides without relying on explicit structural data. Inspired by the recent progress in the field of large language models, we present PeptideBERT, a protein language model specifically tailored for predicting essential peptide properties such as hemolysis, solubility, and nonfouling. The PeptideBERT utilizes the ProtBERT pretrained transformer model with 12 attention heads and 12 hidden layers. Through fine-tuning the pretrained model for the three downstream tasks, our model is state of the art (SOTA) in predicting hemolysis, which is crucial for determining a peptide's potential to induce red blood cells as well as nonfouling properties. Leveraging primarily shorter sequences and a data set with negative samples predominantly associated with insoluble peptides, our model showcases remarkable performance.
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Affiliation(s)
- Chakradhar Guntuboina
- Department
of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, United States
| | - Adrita Das
- Department
of Biomedical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon
University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, United States
| | - Parisa Mollaei
- Department
of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon
University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, United States
| | - Seongwon Kim
- Department
of Chemical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon
University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, United States
| | - Amir Barati Farimani
- Department
of Biomedical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon
University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, United States
- Department
of Chemical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon
University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, United States
- Machine
Learning Department, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, United States
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10
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Jundi D, Coutanceau JP, Bullier E, Imarraine S, Fajloun Z, Hong E. Expression of olfactory receptor genes in non-olfactory tissues in the developing and adult zebrafish. Sci Rep 2023; 13:4651. [PMID: 36944644 PMCID: PMC10030859 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-30895-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/07/2022] [Accepted: 03/02/2023] [Indexed: 03/23/2023] Open
Abstract
Since the discovery of olfactory receptor (OR) genes, their expression in non-olfactory tissues have been reported in rodents and humans. For example, mouse OR23 (mOR23) is expressed in sperm and muscle cells and has been proposed to play a role in chemotaxis and muscle migration, respectively. In addition, mouse mesencephalic dopaminergic neurons express various ORs, which respond to corresponding ligands. As the OR genes comprise the largest multigene family of G protein-coupled receptors in vertebrates (over 400 genes in human and 1000 in rodents), it has been difficult to categorize the extent of their diverse expression in non-olfactory tissues making it challenging to ascertain their function. The zebrafish genome contains significantly fewer OR genes at around 140 genes, and their expression pattern can be easily analyzed by carrying out whole mount in situ hybridization (ISH) assay in larvae. In this study, we found that 31 out of 36 OR genes, including or104-2, or108-1, or111-1, or125-4, or128-1, or128-5, 133-4, or133-7, or137-3 are expressed in various tissues, including the trunk, pharynx, pancreas and brain in the larvae. In addition, some OR genes are expressed in distinct brain regions such as the hypothalamus and the habenula in a dynamic temporal pattern between larvae, juvenile and adult zebrafish. We further confirmed that OR genes are expressed in non-olfactory tissues by RT-PCR in larvae and adults. These results indicate tight regulation of OR gene expression in the brain in a spatial and temporal manner and that the expression of OR genes in non-olfactory tissues are conserved in vertebrates. This study provides a framework to start investigating the function of ORs in the zebrafish brain.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dania Jundi
- INSERM, CNRS, Neurosciences Paris Seine-Institut de Biologie Paris Seine (NPS-IBPS), Sorbonne Université, 75005, Paris, France
- Laboratory of Applied Biotechnology (LBA3B), Azm Center for Research in Biotechnology and Its Applications, EDST, Lebanese University, Tripoli, 1300, Lebanon
| | - Jean-Pierre Coutanceau
- INSERM, CNRS, Neurosciences Paris Seine-Institut de Biologie Paris Seine (NPS-IBPS), Sorbonne Université, 75005, Paris, France
| | - Erika Bullier
- INSERM, CNRS, Neurosciences Paris Seine-Institut de Biologie Paris Seine (NPS-IBPS), Sorbonne Université, 75005, Paris, France
| | - Soumaiya Imarraine
- INSERM, CNRS, Neurosciences Paris Seine-Institut de Biologie Paris Seine (NPS-IBPS), Sorbonne Université, 75005, Paris, France
- CNRS, Laboratoire Jean Perrin-Institut de Biologie Paris Seine (LJP-IBPS), Sorbonne Université, 75005, Paris, France
| | - Ziad Fajloun
- Laboratory of Applied Biotechnology (LBA3B), Azm Center for Research in Biotechnology and Its Applications, EDST, Lebanese University, Tripoli, 1300, Lebanon
- Department of Biology, Faculty of Sciences 3, Campus Michel Slayman, Lebanese University, Tripoli, 1352, Lebanon
| | - Elim Hong
- INSERM, CNRS, Neurosciences Paris Seine-Institut de Biologie Paris Seine (NPS-IBPS), Sorbonne Université, 75005, Paris, France.
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11
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Gutiérrez-Mondragón MA, König C, Vellido A. Layer-Wise Relevance Analysis for Motif Recognition in the Activation Pathway of the β2- Adrenergic GPCR Receptor. Int J Mol Sci 2023; 24:ijms24021155. [PMID: 36674669 PMCID: PMC9865744 DOI: 10.3390/ijms24021155] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/15/2022] [Revised: 12/22/2022] [Accepted: 12/30/2022] [Indexed: 01/11/2023] Open
Abstract
G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are cell membrane proteins of relevance as therapeutic targets, and are associated to the development of treatments for illnesses such as diabetes, Alzheimer's, or even cancer. Therefore, comprehending the underlying mechanisms of the receptor functional properties is of particular interest in pharmacoproteomics and in disease therapy at large. Their interaction with ligands elicits multiple molecular rearrangements all along their structure, inducing activation pathways that distinctly influence the cell response. In this work, we studied GPCR signaling pathways from molecular dynamics simulations as they provide rich information about the dynamic nature of the receptors. We focused on studying the molecular properties of the receptors using deep-learning-based methods. In particular, we designed and trained a one-dimensional convolution neural network and illustrated its use in a classification of conformational states: active, intermediate, or inactive, of the β2-adrenergic receptor when bound to the full agonist BI-167107. Through a novel explainability-oriented investigation of the prediction results, we were able to identify and assess the contribution of individual motifs (residues) influencing a particular activation pathway. Consequently, we contribute a methodology that assists in the elucidation of the underlying mechanisms of receptor activation-deactivation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mario A. Gutiérrez-Mondragón
- Computer Science Department, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya—UPC BarcelonaTech, 08034 Barcelona, Spain
- Intelligent Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (IDEAI-UPC) Research Center, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya—UPC BarcelonaTech, 08034 Barcelona, Spain
| | - Caroline König
- Computer Science Department, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya—UPC BarcelonaTech, 08034 Barcelona, Spain
- Intelligent Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (IDEAI-UPC) Research Center, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya—UPC BarcelonaTech, 08034 Barcelona, Spain
- Correspondence:
| | - Alfredo Vellido
- Computer Science Department, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya—UPC BarcelonaTech, 08034 Barcelona, Spain
- Intelligent Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (IDEAI-UPC) Research Center, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya—UPC BarcelonaTech, 08034 Barcelona, Spain
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