Chapter 6. Plasmon resonance methods in membrane protein biology applications to GPCR signaling

Plasmon waveguide resonance (PWR) spectroscopy, a variant of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) spectrometry, allows one to examine changes in conformation of anisotropic structures such as membranes and membrane-associated proteins such as G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). The binding and resulting structural changes that accompany interactions of membrane protein with ligands (agonists, antagonists, inverse agonist, etc.), G-proteins, and other effectors and modulators of signaling can be directly examined with this technique. In this chapter we outline the instrumentation used for these studies, the experimental methods that allow determination of the structural changes, and thermodynamic and kinetic parameters that can be obtained from these studies.