Free energy calculations of the functional selectivity of 5-HT2B G protein-coupled receptor

PLoS One. 2020 Dec 9;15(12):e0243313. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0243313. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

G Protein-Coupled Receptors (GPCRs) mediate intracellular signaling in response to extracellular ligand binding and are the target of one-third of approved drugs. Ligand binding modulates the GPCR molecular free energy landscape by preferentially stabilizing active or inactive conformations that dictate intracellular protein recruitment and downstream signaling. We perform enhanced sampling molecular dynamics simulations to recover the free energy surfaces of a thermostable mutant of the GPCR serotonin receptor 5-HT2B in the unliganded form and bound to a lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) agonist and lisuride antagonist. LSD binding imparts a ∼110 kJ/mol driving force for conformational rearrangement into an active state. The lisuride-bound form is structurally similar to the apo form and only ∼24 kJ/mol more stable. This work quantifies ligand-induced conformational specificity and functional selectivity of 5-HT2B and presents a platform for high-throughput virtual screening of ligands and rational engineering of the ligand-bound molecular free energy landscape.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Humans
  • Lysergic Acid Diethylamide / chemistry*
  • Molecular Dynamics Simulation*
  • Receptor, Serotonin, 5-HT2B / chemistry*
  • Thermodynamics

Substances

  • HTR2B protein, human
  • Receptor, Serotonin, 5-HT2B
  • Lysergic Acid Diethylamide

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the External Innovation Department of Zoetis Inc. The funder provided support in the form of salaries for authors B.L.P., J.D., and A.L.F., but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section. This work was completed in part with resources provided by the University of Chicago Research Computing Center. We gratefully acknowledge compute time on the University of Chicago high-performance GPU-based cyberinfrastructure acquired under National Science Foundation Grant No. DMR-1828629.