Neuroscience

Cell-based functional assays are an important part of compound screening and drug lead optimization, and they can also play a crucial role in the determination of the residues involved in ligand binding and signaling for a particular G-protein-coupled receptor. Conventional methods used for Gα_q/15-coupled receptors rely on the use of fluorescent probes for Ca⁺⁺ sensing (such as Fura-2 and Fluo-4) or on the incorporation of [³H]-inositol into inositol 1,4,5- triphosphate (IP3). However, these methods are not suitable for screening large libraries of compounds or for screening several mutants of the same receptor. In contrast, the IP-One assay by Cisbio is a TR-FRET assay suitable for large compound library screening when using stable cell lines that express a specific 7TMR. However, when using transiently transfected mutants of a 7TMR, this assay is not ideal, as it requires a two-step protocol of cell culture. Therefore, we have optimized the IP-One assay protocol using the reverse transfection method in 384-well plates. This offers a time- and resource-efficient alternative to the two-step protocol previously used for the screening of several mutants of Gα_q/15-coupled 7TMRs.

Studying protein-protein and protein-lipid interactions in their native environment is highly desirable, yet, the heterogeneity and complexity of cellular systems limits the repertoire of experimental methods available. In cells, interactions are often taking place in confined microenvironments where factors such as avidity, hindered diffusion, reduced dimensionality, crowding etc. strongly influence the binding kinetics and therefore it can be problematic to equate binding affinities obtained by bulk in-solution methods (e.g., Fluorescence Polarization, Isothermal titration calorimetry, Microscale thermophoresis) with those occurring in real cellular environments. The Supported Cell Membrane Sheet method presented here, addresses these issues by allowing access to the inner leaflet of the apical plasma membrane. The method is a highly versatile, near-native platform for both qualitative and quantitative studies of protein-protein and protein-lipid interactions occurring directly in or on the plasma membrane.

The visible immunoprecipitation (VIP) assay is a convenient alternative to conventional co-immunoprecipitation (Katoh et al., 2015). By processing lysates from cells co-expressing GFP-fusion and RFP-fusion proteins for immunoprecipitation with GST-tagged anti-GFP Nanobody and glutathione-Sepharose beads, protein-protein interactions can be visualized by directly observing the beads bearing immunoprecipitates under a fluorescence microscope. This assay can examine a large number of protein combinations at one time, without requiring time-consuming procedures, including SDS-PAGE and immunoblotting. Furthermore, the VIP assay can examine complicated one-to-many and many-to-many protein interactions. Another important point of the VIP assay is the use of nanobodies for immunoprecipitation. A Nanobody is a single-domain antibody derived from Camelidae (camels and relatives). Because of its small size, high-affinity, high-specificity, and stability, anti-GFP Nanobody expressed in E. coli can be purified on a large scale, and used virtually inexhaustibly for immunoprecipitation experiments. Here we describe protocols for preparation of GST-tagged anti-GFP Nanobody and the VIP assay.

We designed a fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET)-based approach to study the ligand binding constants of the adenosine A_2A receptor (A_2AR). Our assay is based in the interaction of a fluorescent A_2AR agonist ligand (MRS5424) with an A_2AR tagged with the cyan fluorescent protein (CFP) at the N-terminus (i.e. A_2AR^CFP) and expressed in living cells. Thus, upon fast superfusion of the A_2AR^CFP expressing cells with MRS5424, the ligand-receptor interaction is determined by single-cell FRET in a real-time mode. Accordingly, our approach allowed immediate ‘real-time’ readout of the ligand-receptor interaction, thus allowing kinetic binding experiments, a feature impossible to achieve using conventional radioisotope-labelled ligands. In addition, since our assay permitted the visual confirmation of receptor localization it also allowed localized saturation binding experiments.

Gaboxadol (4,5,6,7-tetrahydroisoxazolo[5,4-c]pyridin-3-ol, THIP), a GABA_A receptor δ-subunit specific agonist, when present at low (μM) concentrations, preferentially binds and activates extrasynaptic (non-γ2, δ-subunit-containing) GABA_ARs (Storustovu and Ebert, 2006; Richardson et al., 2011, 2013).

In this prototype saturation binding experiment, a series of concentrations of [3H]gaboxadol (5, 10, 25, 50, 75, 100, 250 and 400 nM) will be used. GABA at 200 μM will be added into binding mixtures as a cold displacer for [³H]gaboxadol. Slide mailers are used and each requires 7 ml binding mixture. Pre-, post-washing and binding buffer is 50 mM Tris-Citrate (pH 7.1). The detailed procedure is outlined below.