Lipid–GPCR interactions in an asymmetric plasma membrane model
Date
2025-01-30
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Faraday Discussions
Abstract
We report simulations and analysis of the A2A adenosine receptor in its fully active state, in two different membrane environments. The first is a model in which the lipids are distributed asymmetrically according to recent lipidomics, simulations, and biophysical measurements, which together establish the distribution of lipids and cholesterol between the two leaflets. The second is the symmetrized version, which captures the membrane state following loss of lipid asymmetry. By comparing lipid–protein interactions between these two cases we show that solvation by phosphatidyl serine (PS) is insensitive to the loss of asymmetry—an abundance of positively charged sidechains around the cytoplasmic side of the receptor enriches solvation by PS in both membrane states. Cholesterol interactions are sensitive to the loss of asymmetry, with the abundance of cholesterol in the exoplasmic leaflet driving long-lived cholesterol interactions in the asymmetric state. However, one cholesterol interaction site on helix 6 is observed in both cases, and was also observed in earlier work with different membrane models, supporting its identification as a bona fide cholesterol binding site.
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This article was originally published in Faraday Discussions. The version of record is available at: https://doi.org/10.1039/D4FD00210E.
This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2025.
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/).
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Citation
Ji, Jingjing, and Edward Lyman. “Lipid–GPCR Interactions in an Asymmetric Plasma Membrane Model.” Faraday Discuss., 2025. https://doi.org/10.1039/D4FD00210E.