Abstract
Increasing evidence suggests that G protein-coupled receptors form functional dimers or larger oligomeric complexes through homo- or heterodimerization, and that various transmembrane (TM) domains contribute dimerization interfaces. In this study, monomeric receptor structures - either the monomeric crystallographic structure of bovine rhodopsin or an A(3) adenosine receptor (AR) homology model - were dimerized by computational methods assuming various TM contact regions, optimized, and compared. The semi-empirical oligomeric structure of mouse rhodopsin studied in a native disc membrane with atomic force microscopy was used to establish the distance between monomers in the initial dimeric models. Among eight variations of symmetrical homodimers of bovine rhodopsin, the favored dimeric assembly closely resembled the semi-empirical model, in which TM domains 4 and 5 were the contact site, thus validating this approach. We used similar methods to generate eight homodimers of the A(3)AR and found the favored dimeric interface similarly to be TM4-5. By this method, dimeric variations - TM1-2, TM2-3, TM2-4, TM3-4, TM4-5, TM5-6, TM6-7, and TM7-1 - were constructed with the SYBYL 7.0 program by using a novel "fit-centroids-normal" method. Fitting atoms considered one of eight TM-TM centroids or seven-TM centroids, two centroids of each monomer, and a normal atom passing through the plane containing all centroids. Following molecular dynamics, the most energetically favorable contact modes were identified. In addition to TM4-5, which was favored in both rhodopsin and A(3)AR dimeric models, TM1-2 dimers in which helices 8 also contacted each other were judged favorable. The largest contact surface area between the monomers among the various homodimers, determined by van der Waals calculation with the MOLCAD surface program, was for the TM4-5 dimer. This contact surface also showed a high degree of shape complementarity. In addition, the TM4-5 dimers made by this theoretical method were more stable than the semi-empirically determined dimer.