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The group of proton-sensing G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) consists of the four receptors GPR4, TDAG8 (GPR65), OGR1 (GPR68), and G2A (GPR132). These receptors are cellular sensors of acidification, a property that has been attributed to the presence of crucial histidine residues. However, the pH detection varies considerably among the group of proton-sensing GPCRs and ranges from pH of 5.5 to 7.8. While the proton-sensing GPCRs were initially considered to detect acidic cellular environments in the context of inflammation, recent observations have expanded our knowledge about their physiological and pathophysiological functions and many additional individual and unique features have been discovered that suggest a more differentiated role of these receptors in health and disease. It is known that all four receptors contribute to different aspects of tumor biology, cardiovascular physiology, and asthma. However, apart from their overlapping functions, they seem to have individual properties, and recent publications identify potential roles of individual GPCRs in mechanosensation, intestinal inflammation, oncoimmunological interactions, hematopoiesis, as well as inflammatory and neuropathic pain. Here, we put together the knowledge about the biological functions and structural features of the four proton-sensing GPCRs and discuss the biological role of each of the four receptors individually. We explore all currently known pharmacological modulators of the four receptors and highlight potential use. Finally, we point out knowledge gaps in the biological and pharmacological context of proton-sensing GPCRs that should be addressed by future studies.
G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) are a predominant class of cell-surface receptors in eukaryotic life. They are responsible for the perception of a broad range of ligands and involved in a multitude of physiological functions. GPCRs are therefore of crucial interest for biological and pharmaceutical research. Molecular analysis and functional characterisation of GPCRs is frequently hampered by challenges in efficient large-scale production, non-destructive purification and long-term stability. Cell-free protein synthesis (CFPS) provides new production platforms for GPCRs by extracting the protein synthesis machinery of the cell in an open system that allows target-oriented modulations of the synthesis process and direct access to the nascent polypeptide chain. CFPS is fast, reliable and highly adaptable. Unfortunately, highly productive cell-free synthesis of GPCRs is often opposed by low product quality. This thesis was aimed to adapt and improve some of the new possibilities for the cell-free production of GPCRs in high yield and quality for structural and pharmaceutical analysis. An E. coli based CFPS system was applied to synthesise various turkey and human Beta-adrenergic receptor (Beta1AR) derivatives as well as human Endothelin receptors type A and B (ETA and ETB) constructs. Both receptor families are important drug targets and pharmacologically addressed in the treatment of several cardiovascular diseases. CF-synthesis was mainly performed in presence of nanodiscs (ND), which are reconstituted high density lipoprotein particles forming discoidal bilayer patches with a diameter varyring from 6 to approx. 15 nm. The supplementation of ND in the CF-synthesis reaction caused the co-translational solubilisation of the freshly synthesised GPCRs. The fraction of the solubilised GPCR that was correctly folded was analysed by the competence to bind its ligand alprenolol or Endothelin-1, respectively. Both the solubilisation efficiency and the ability to fold in a ligand binding competent state was strongly affected by the lipid composition of the supplied ND. Best results were generally achieved with lipids having phosphoglycerol headgroups and unsaturated fatty acid chains with 18 carbon atoms. Furthermore, thermostabilisation by introduction of point mutations had a large positive impact on the folding efficiency of both Beta1AR and ETB receptor. Formation of a conserved disulphide bridge in the extracellular region was additionally found to be crucial for the function of the ETB receptor. Disulphide bridge formation could be enhanced by applying a glutathione-based redox system in the CFPS. Further improvements in the quality of ETB receptor could be made by the enrichment of heat-shock chaperones in the CF-reaction. Depending on the receptor type and DNA-template, roughly 10 – 30 nmol (350 – 1500 µg) of protein could be synthesised in 1 ml of CF-reaction mixture. After the applied optimisation steps, the fractions of correctly folded receptor could be improved by several orders of magnitude and were finally in between 35% for the thermostabilised turkey Beta1AR, 9% for the thermostabilised ETB receptor, 6.5% for the non-stabilised ETB receptor, 1 - 5% for non-stabilised turkey Beta1AR and for human Beta1AR isoforms and 0.1% for ETA receptor. Therefore, between 2 and 120 µg of GPCR could be synthesised in a ligand binding competent form, depending on the receptor and its modifications. Correctly folded turkey Beta1AR and ETB receptors were thermostable at 30°C and could be stored at 4°C for several weeks after purification. Yields of the thermostabilised turkey Beta1AR were sufficient to purify the receptor in a two-step process by ligand-binding chromatography to obtain pure and correctly folded receptor in the lipid bilayer of a ND. Furthermore, a lipid dependent ligand screen could be demonstrated with the turkey Beta1AR and significant alterations in binding affinities to currently in-use pharmaceuticals were found. The established protocols are therefore suitable and highly competetive for a variety of applications such as screening of GPCR ligands, analysis of lipid effects on GPCR function or for the systematical biochemical characterisation of GPCRs. Most promising for future approaches appears to address the suspected bottlenecks of intial insertion of the GPCR-polypeptide chain in the ND bilayer and the thermal stability of the receptors. Nevertheless, the estabilised protocols for the analysed targets in this thesis are already highly competitive to previously published production protocols either in cell-based or cell-free systems with regard to yield of functional protein, speediness and costs. Moreover, the direct accessibility and other general characteristics of cell-free synthesis open a large variety of possible applications and this work can therefore contribute to the molecular characterisation of this important receptor type and to the development of new pharmaceuticals.
Neuropathic pain, a form of chronic pain, is a steadily rising health problem due to health costs and increasing numbers of patients. Neuropathic pain conditions arise upon metabolic disorders, infections, chemotherapeutic treatment, trauma or nerve injury. Especially nerve injury induced neuropathic pain is characterized by spontaneous or ongoing pain due to neuroimmune interactions. Thereby, inflammatory mediators, released by the injured nerve, recruit to and activate immune cells at the site of injury. Those mediators further activate transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 (TRPV1), a known channel involved in pain perception, or bind to G-protein coupled receptors (GPCR) in peripheral nerve endings. The following activated second messenger signaling pathways lead to sensitization of TRPV1. One of those GPCRs is G2A.
The overall aim of this thesis was to investigate the role of G2A in nerve-injury induced neuropathic pain. For this, the common mouse model of nerve-injury induced neuropathic pain, the spared-nerve injury, was used. As measurements with dynamic plantar aesthesiometer showed, G2A-deficiency leads to reduced mechanical hypersensitivity. Upon analysis with FACS, ELISA and Luminex a reduced number of macrophages and neutrophils at the injured nerve, as well as less inflammatory mediators (TNFα, IL-6, VEGF) in G2A-deficient animals was observed. In dorsal root ganglia (DRGs) there was only a reduced number of macrophages and less IL-12 observed in G2A-deficient animals. Additionally, in wild-type mice, G2A agonist 9-HODE was elevated at the injured nerve, as a LC-MS/MS analysis showed.
To investigate the underlying pathways of G2A-9-HODE signaling, a proteom screen was performed. This screen revealed upregulation of multiple proteins involved in migration in wild-type macrophages. Additionally, Ca-Imaging and transwell migration assays showed that the G2A antagonist G2A11, had desensitizing effects on DRG neurons and inhibited macrophage migration.
Overall, the results suggest that loss of G2A has dual effects. On the one hand loss of G2A is antinociceptive. On the other hand, G2A-deficiency leads to reduced inflammation, suggesting G2A as promising target in treatment of neuropathic pain. Here, an antagonist had inhibitory effects on the migration and the sensitization.
G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) comprise the largest transmembrane receptor family encoded in the human genome. GPCRs mediate the effect of a wide diversity of stimuli including light, odorants, ions, lipids, small peptides, and hormones. GPR182 is a GPCR for which no endogenous ligand has been identified yet. In the absence of an identified ligand, GPR182 remained poorly understood, and its biological functions had remained elusive. The presented work shows that GPR182 is highly and specifically expressed in microvascular endothelial cells. Phylogenetically, GPR182 is closely related to the atypical chemokine receptor 3 (ACKR3). Here, I show that GPR182 binds the chemokines CXCL10, -12 and -13. Similarly to other so-called atypical chemokine receptors, GPR182 is not coupled to G-proteins but is rather constitutively internalized following β-arrestin 2 recruitment. Consistent with potential scavenger functions, we detected increased concentration of the chemokines which bind the receptor in the plasma of Gpr182 deficient mice. Finally, we show that GPR182 plays an essential role in maintaining hematopoietic stem cells within the bone marrow niche. In summary, the data indicate that GPR182 is a novel member of the group of atypical chemokine receptors, which plays an important role in the chemokine/chemokine receptor network.
Macrophages are highly versatile cells, which acquire, depending on their microenvironment, pro- (M1-like), or antiinflammatory (M2-like) phenotypes. Here, we studied the role of the G-protein coupled receptor G2A (GPR132), in chemotactic migration and polarization of macrophages, using the zymosan-model of acute inflammation. G2A-deficient mice showed a reduced zymosan-induced thermal hyperalgesia, which was reversed after macrophage depletion. Fittingly, the number of M1-like macrophages was reduced in the inflamed tissue in G2A-deficient mice. However, G2A activation was not sufficient to promote M1-polarization in bone marrow-derived macrophages. While the number of monocyte-derived macrophages in the inflamed paw was not altered, G2A-deficient mice had less macrophages in the direct vicinity of the origin of inflammation, an area marked by the presence of zymosan, neutrophil accumulation and proinflammatory cytokines. Fittingly neutrophil efferocytosis was decreased in G2A-deficient mice and several lipids, which are released by neutrophils and promote G2A-mediated chemotaxis, were increased in the inflamed tissue. Taken together, G2A is necessary to position macrophages in the proinflammatory microenvironment surrounding the center of inflammation. In absence of G2A the macrophages are localized in an antiinflammatory microenvironment and macrophage polarization is shifted toward M2-like macrophages.
This study focuses on structural features of a particular GPCR type, the family C GPCRs. Structure- and ligand-based approaches were adopted for prediction of novel mGluR5 binding ligand and their binding modes. The objectives of this study were: 1. An analysis of function and structural implication of amino acids in the TM region of family C GPCRs. 2. The prediction of the TM domain structure of mGluR5. 3. The discovery of novel selective allosteric modulators of mGluR5 by virtual screening. 4. The prediction of a ligand binding mode for the allosteric binding site in mGluR5. GPCRs are a super-family of structurally related proteins although their primary amino acid sequence can be diverse. Using sequence information a conservation analysis of family C GPCRs should be applied to reveal characteristic differences and similarities with respect function, folding and ligand binding. Using experimental data and conservation analysis the allosteric binding site of mGluR5 should be characterized regarding NAM and PAM and selective ligand binding. For further evaluation experimental knowledge about family A GPCRs as well as conservation between vertebrate rhodopsins was planned to be compared to results obtained for family C GPCRs (Section 4.1 Conservation analysis of family C GPCRs). Since no receptor structure is available for any family C GPCR, discussion of conserved sequence positions between family A and C GPCRs requires the prediction of a receptor structure for mGluR5 using a family A receptor as template. In order to predict the mGluR5 structure a sequence alignment to a GPCR template protein will have to be proposed and GPCR specific features considered in structure calculation (Section 4.1.4 Structure prediction of mGluR5). The obtained structure was intended to be involved in ligand binding mode prediction of newly discovered active molecules. For discovery of novel selective mGluR modulators several ligand-based virtual screening protocols were adapted and evaluated. Prediction models were derived for selection of possibly active molecules using a diverse collection of known mGluR binding ligands. For that purpose a data collection of known mGluR binding ligands should be established and this reference collection analyzed with respect to different ligand activity classes, NAM or PAM and selective modulators. The prediction of novel NAMs and PAMs using several combinations of 2D-, 3D-, pharmacophore or molecule shape encoding methods with machine learning techniques and similarity determining methods should be tested in a prospective manner (Section 4.2 Virtual screening for novel mGluR modulators). In collaboration with Merz Pharmaceuticals (Merz GmbH & Co. KGaA, Frankfurt am Main, Germany) the modulating effect of a few hundred molecules should be approved in a functional cell-based assay. With the objective to predict a binding mode of the discovered active molecules, molecule docking should be applied using the allosteric binding site of the modeled mGluR5 structure (Section 4.2.4 Modeling of binding modes). Predicted ligand binding modes are to be correlated to conservation profiles that had resulted from the sequence-based entropy analysis and information from mutation experiments, and shall be compared to known ligand binding poses from crystal structures of family A GPCRs.
Innerhalb der vorliegenden Arbeit wurden verschiedene Teilaspekte des S1P-Signalsystems näher untersucht. Der erste Teil der Arbeit geht der Frage nach, welche Störungen das Ausschalten der S1P-Lyase in der Ca2+-Homöostase verursacht. Die Messung der zellulären Lipidkonzentrationen ergab in Sgpl1-/--MEFs einen sechsfach höherer Wert für S1P und einen doppelt so hohen Wert für Sphingosin als in den Sgpl1+/+-MEFs. [Ca2+]i wurde an Einzelzellen mit Hilfe des Proteinfarbstoffs Cameleon untersucht, wobei [Ca2+]i-Anstiege durch den SERCA-Inhibitor Thapsigargin induziert wurden. So konnte gezeigt werden, dass sowohl in Sgpl1+/+-MEFs als auch in Sgpl1-/--MEFs zwei verschiedene Subtypen existieren, die sich hinsichtlich Geschwindigkeit und Ausmaß des [Ca2+]i-Anstiegs unterscheiden. Die basale [Ca2+]i war im Subtyp der Sgpl1-/--MEFs mit einem schnellen und kurzen [Ca2+]i-Anstieg signifikant erhöht, während das Maximum des Thapsigargin-induzierten [Ca2+]i-Anstiegs im Subtyp der Sgpl1-/--MEFs mit einem langsamen und langen [Ca2+]i-Anstieg signifikant erhöht war. Die AUC des Zeitverlaufs nach der Stimulation mit Thapsigargin war in beiden Subtypen der Sgpl1-/--MEFs signifikant erhöht, was bedeutet, dass der Ca2+-Gehalt der Thapsigargin-sensitiven Speicher in Sgpl1-/--MEFs höher als in Wildtyp-MEFs war.
Im zweiten Teil der Arbeit wurden Aspekte der Modulation des S1P-Signalsystems durch das Sphingosin-Analogon cis-4-Methylsphingosin näher untersucht. Die Messung der Lipidkonzentrationen von cis-4-Methylsphingosin und dem Phosphorylierungsprodukt cis-4-Methyl-S1P erfolgte dabei in HEK-293-Zellen und deren Überständen mittels LC-MS/MS. Hierbei wurde erstmals cis-4-Methyl-S1P im Zellkulturüberstand nachgewiesen, was bedeutet, dass cis-4-Methylsphingosin nach der intrazellulären Phosphorylierung sezerniert werden kann. Dieser Mechanismus bildet die Grundlage dafür, dass cis-4-Methylsphingosin nicht nur intrazellulär wirken, sondern ebenso wie FTY720 als S1P-Rezeptor-Modulator fungieren kann. Der dritte und umfangreichste Teil der Arbeit befasst sich mit der Regulation der SK1 durch G-Protein-gekoppelte Rezeptoren. Um die Rolle von Gαq/11-Proteinen bei der Ansteuerung der SK1 durch G-Protein-gekoppelte Rezeptoren weiter zu analysieren, wurde zunächst die Rezeptor-induzierte Translokation der SK1 in MEFs untersucht, die sowohl in Gαq als auch in seinem Homolog Gα11 doppelt defizient waren (Gαq/11 -/--MEFs). Die SK1-Translokation war nur nach Transfektion mit Gαq möglich. Um Hinweise auf die strukturellen Erfordernisse für die SK1-Ansteuerung durch Gαq zu erhalten, wurde der Einfluss verschiedener Gαq-Mutanten auf die Translokationshalbwertszeit der SK1 untersucht. So waren alle untersuchten Mutanten in der Lage, die SK1-Translokation in Gαq/11-/--MEFs zu vermitteln. Die Expression der Gαq-W263D-Mutante führte dabei zu einer signifikant verlangsamten SK1-Translokation. Die durch Gαq-T257E-vermittelte Translokation war erst nach mehreren Minuten feststellbar. Die Abhängigkeit der SK1-Translokation von Gαq wurde auf zellulärer Ebene durch Coexpression einer katalytisch inaktiven Mutante der G-Protein gekoppelter Rezeptorkinase 2 (GRK2) als Gαq-scavenger in HEK3-Zellen nachgewiesen. Dies führte zu einer vollständigen Inhibierung der Carbachol-induzierten SK1-Translokation. Hingegen führte die Überexpression der SK1 in den M3-Rezeptor exprimierenden HEK-293-Zellen zu einer reduzierten Carbachol-induzierten Aktivierung der PLCβ. Dieser Effekt war unabhängig von der katalytischen Aktivität der SK1. Daraus lässt sich schlussfolgern, dass die SK1 mit den Effektoren GRK2 und PLCβ um gemeinsame Bindungsstellen der aktivierten G-Protein Untereinheit Gαq konkurriert. Zusätzlich wurde die direkte Interaktion zwischen Gαq und SK1 auf Proteinebene mittels optischer Thermophorese nachgewiesen. Dazu wurde die humane SK1 als N-terminal getaggtes His6-MBP-Fusionsprotein exprimiert, aufgereinigt und charakterisiert. So konnte gezeigt werden, dass die mit dem Fluoreszenzfarbstoff NT647-markierte hSK1 (hSK1*) mit dem TNF Rezeptor-assoziiertem Faktor 2 (TRAF2), nicht jedoch mit dem N-terminalen Fragment des TRAF family member-associated NF-kappa-B activator (TANK) interagierte. Sowohl inaktives Gαq als auch [AlF4]--aktiviertes Gαq interagierten mit der hSK1* mit einem vergleichbaren kD-Wert. Auch mit NT-647-markiertes Gαq interagierte mit der hSK1 sowohl in der inaktiven als auch in der [AlF4]--aktivierten Form, wohingegen es nicht mit TANK oder TRAF2 interagierte.
Insgesamt zeigen die erhaltenen Daten, dass die SK1 ein direktes Target von Gαq ist und sie an genau dieselben Gαq-Reste bindet, an die auch die klassischen Effektoren PLCβ, p63RhoGEF und GRK2 binden.