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Updated: May 28, 2026

Strategic Screening and Characterization of the Visual GPCR-mini-G Protein Signaling Complex for Successful Crystallization
Published on: March 16, 2020
The structure of active opsin as a basis for identification of GPCR agonists by dynamic homology modelling and
Michael Schneider1, Steffen Wolf, Jürgen Schlitter
1Department of Biophysics, University of Bochum, Bochum, Germany.
Abstract:
Most of the currently available G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) crystal structures represent an inactive receptor state, which has been considered to be suitable only for the discovery of antagonists and inverse agonists in structure-based computational ligand screening. Using the β(2)-adrenergic receptor (B2AR) as a model system, we show that a dynamic homology model based on an "active" opsin structure without further incorporation of experimental data performs better than the crystal structure of the inactive B2AR in finding agonists over antagonists/inverse agonists. Such "active-like state" dynamic homology models can therefore be used to selectively identify GPCR agonists in in silico ligand libraries.
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