Computational design of G Protein-Coupled Receptor allosteric signal transductions

Membrane receptors sense and transduce extracellular stimuli into intracellular signaling responses but the molecular underpinnings remain poorly understood. We report a computational approach for designing protein allosteric signaling functions. By combining molecular dynamics simulations and design calculations, the method engineers amino-acid ‘microswitches’ at allosteric sites that modulate receptor stability or long-range coupling, to reprogram specific signaling properties. We designed 36 dopamine D2 receptor variants, whose constitutive and ligand-induced signaling agreed well with our predictions, repurposed the D2 receptor into a serotonin biosensor and predicted the signaling effects of more than 100 known G-protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) mutations. Our results reveal the existence of distinct classes of allosteric microswitches and pathways that define an unforeseen molecular mechanism of regulation and evolution of GPCR signaling. Our approach enables the rational design of allosteric receptors with enhanced stability and function to facilitate structural characterization, and reprogram cellular signaling in synthetic biology and cell engineering applications.