Serotonin receptors

The monoamine 5-hydroxytryptamine (serotonin, 5-HT) is a neurotransmitter, which acts via seven families of serotonin receptors. We have been focusing on studying the 5-HT1A receptor, which is the most widespread of all serotonin receptors and have found that fluorescently labelled serotonergic ligand NAN-190 is suitable for the characterization of ligand binding to 5-HT1A receptors in budded baculovirus particles (Figure 1). Our experiments have also shown that co-expression of 5-HT1A and G protein subunits αi+βγ is possible in a baculovirus display system and we can use this to study the effects of Mn2+ and guanine nucleotides on high affinity ligand binding to these signaling complexes (Tõntson et al. 2014).

​Figure 1. Budded baculovirus particles can be used to study fluorescent ligand Bodipy-FL-NAN-190 binding to 5-HT1A receptor in fluorescence anisotropy-based assay. Coexpression of αi subunits of human G-proteins in baculovirus particles resulted in the appearance of significantly greater proportion of nucleotide sensitive high-affinity agonist binding sites. Figure from (Tõntson et al. 2014).