Biased agonists differentially modulate the receptor conformation ensembles in Angiotensin II type 1 receptor

The structural features that contribute to the efficacy of biased agonists targeting G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) towards G proteins or β-arrestin (β-arr) signaling pathways is nebulous, although such knowledge is critical in designing biased ligands. The dynamics of the agonist-GPCR complex is one of the critical factors in determining agonist bias. Angiotensin II type I receptor (AT1R) is an ideal model system to study the molecular basis of bias since it has multiple β-arr2 and Gq protein biased agonists as well as experimentally solved three dimensional structures. Using Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations for the Angiotensin II type I receptor (AT1R) bound to ten different agonists, we infer that the agonist bound receptor samples conformations with different relative weights, from both the inactive and active state ensembles of the receptor. This concept is perhaps extensible to other class A GPCRs. Such a weighted mixed ensemble recapitulates the inter-residue distance distributions measured for different agonists bound AT1R using DEER experiments. The ratio of the calculated relative strength of the allosteric communication to β-arr2 vs Gq coupling sites scale similarly to the experimentally measured bias factors. Analysis of the inter-residue distance distributions of the activation microswitches involved in class A GPCR activation suggests that β-arr2 biased agonists turn on different combination of microswitches with different relative strengths of activation. We put forth a model that activation microswitches behave like rheostats that tune the relative efficacy of the biased agonists toward the two signaling pathways. Finally, based on our data we propose that the agonist specific residue contacts in the binding site elicit a combinatorial response in the microswitches that in turn differentially modulate the receptor conformation ensembles resulting in differences in coupling to Gq and β-arrestin.