Optogenetic activation of heterotrimeric G-proteins by LOV2GIVe, a rationally engineered modular protein
- Boston University School of Medicine, United States
Abstract
Heterotrimeric G-proteins are signal transducers involved in mediating the action of many natural extracellular stimuli as well as of many therapeutic agents. Non-invasive approaches to manipulate the activity of G-proteins with high precision are crucial to understand their regulation in space and time. Here, we developed LOV2GIVe, an engineered modular protein that allows the activation of heterotrimeric G-proteins with blue light. This optogenetic construct relies on a versatile design that differs from tools previously developed for similar purposes, i.e. metazoan opsins, which are light-activated GPCRs. Instead, LOV2GIVe consists of the fusion of a G-protein activating peptide derived from a non-GPCR regulator of G-proteins to a small plant protein domain, such that light uncages the G-protein activating module. Targeting LOV2GIVe to cell membranes allowed for light-dependent activation of Gi proteins in different experimental systems. In summary, LOV2GIVe expands the armamentarium and versatility of tools available to manipulate heterotrimeric G-protein activity.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files. Source data files have been provided for Figures 2, 3 and 4 (and their corresponding supplements).
Article and author information
Author details
Mikel Garcia-Marcos
Kshitij Parag-Sharma
Funding
National Institute of General Medical Sciences (R01GM136132)
- Mikel Garcia-Marcos
American Cancer Society (PF-19-084-01-CDD)
- Marcin Maziarz
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2020, Garcia-Marcos 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.
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Optogenetic activation of heterotrimeric G-proteins by LOV2GIVe, a rationally engineered modular protein
eLife 9:e60155.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.60155
