Tools
07/01/2020
Doctoral thesis of Tomasz Maciej Stępniewski : "Unraveling the complex signaling behavior of neurotransmitters and their receptors in the brain"
Next thursday 9th of January at 14:00, Tomek Stępniewski, member of the GPCR Drug Discovery group of GRIB, will read his thesis: "Unraveling the complex signaling behavior of neurotransmitters and their receptors in the brain".
The event will take place at the Marie Curie room on the ground floor of PRBB. You are all invited to come.
Abstract
G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are the main acceptors of neurotransmitters, and thus play an important role in communication between neurons. Because of this they are an attractive drug target for multiple neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders.
The primary function of GPCRs is to initiate diverse intracellular signaling cascades in response to extracellular events, like neurotransmitter binding. Despite the wealth of available biochemical data, the structural foundations of GPCR activity remain poorly understood. Such insights would not only expand our knowledge of those receptors, but also facilitate the design of safer and more efficient drugs.
Here, using several computational approaches, we propose structural mechanisms that explain GPCR in vitro data. We unravel features GPCR functionality at multiple levels of action including ligandreceptor interactions, allosteric signal transmission as well as posttranslational modifications. Our results identify phenomena potentially conserved among GPCRs that advance our understanding of this relevant receptor family.
