Cooperative cobinding of synthetic and natural ligands to the nuclear receptor PPARγ
Abstract
Crystal structures of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARγ) have revealed overlapping binding modes for synthetic and natural/endogenous ligands, indicating competition for the orthosteric pocket. Here we show that cobinding of a synthetic ligand to the orthosteric pocket can push natural and endogenous PPARγ ligands (fatty acids) out of the orthosteric pocket towards an alternate ligand-binding site near the functionally important omega (Ω) loop. X-ray crystallography, NMR spectroscopy, all-atom molecular dynamics simulations, and mutagenesis coupled to quantitative biochemical functional and cellular assays reveal that synthetic ligand and fatty acid cobinding can form a 'ligand link' to the Ω loop and synergistically affect the structure and function of PPARγ. These findings contribute to a growing body of evidence indicating ligand binding to nuclear receptors can be more complex than the classical one-for-one orthosteric exchange of a natural or endogenous ligand with a synthetic ligand.
Data availability
Crystal structures and diffraction data have been deposited in the PDB under accession codes 5UGM, 6AVI, 6AUG, 6MCZ, 6MD0, 6MD1, 6MD2, and 6MD4.
-
PPARgamma LBD complexed with rosiglitazoneBiological Magnetic Resonance Bank, 17975.
-
Human PPAR gamma in complex with nonanoic acidsProtein Data Bank, 4EM9.
-
Crystal Structure of PPARg in complex with T2384Protein Data Bank, 3K8S.
-
Human PPAR gamma ligand binding domain in complex with MCC555Protein Data Bank, 3B0Q.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (R01DK101871)
- Douglas J Kojetin
American Heart Association (16- POST27780018)
- Richard Brust
National Science Foundation (1659594)
- Sarah A Mosure
The Scripps Research Institute
- Sarah A Mosure
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (R00DK103116)
- Travis S Hughes
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (F32DK108442)
- Richard Brust
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2018, Shang et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 3,956
- views
-
- 664
- downloads
-
- 66
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.