RESEARCH ARTICLE
On the Role of G Protein-Coupled Receptors Oligomerization
Maricel Gómez-Soler, Siobhán Ahern, Víctor Fernández-Dueñas, Francisco Ciruela*
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2011Volume: 4
First Page: 47
Last Page: 53
Publisher ID: TOBIOJ-4-47
DOI: 10.2174/1874196701104010047
Article History:
Received Date: 30/03/2011Revision Received Date: 22/04/2011
Acceptance Date: 25/04/2011
Electronic publication date: 26/5/2011
Collection year: 2011
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
The existence of a supramolecular organization of the G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) is now being widely accepted by the scientific community. Indeed, GPCR oligomers may enhance the diversity and performance by which extracellular signals are transferred to the G proteins in the process of receptor transduction, although the mechanism that underlies this phenomenon still remains unsolved. Recently, it has been proposed that a trans-conformational switching model could be the mechanism allowing direct inhibition/activation of receptor activation/inhibition, respectively. Thus, heterotropic receptor-receptor allosteric regulations are behind the GPCR oligomeric function. In this paper we want to revise how GPCR oligomerization impinges on several important receptor functions like biosynthesis, plasma membrane diffusion or velocity, pharmacology and signaling. In particular, the rationale of receptor oligomerization might lie in the need of sensing complex whole cell extracellular signals and translating them into a simple computational model.