Rats exposed to a single stressful event experience days-long constitutive activation of the kappa opioid receptor at inhibitory synapses in part of the brain’s reward system, which increases their drug-seeking behavior.

The structure-based design established a new approach to control pathway-selective activation of opioid receptors, resulting in new dual MOR/KOR G-protein biased agonist analgesics with attenuated liabilities.

Heavy alcohol drinking primes dynorphin /kappa opioid systems in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis to alter stress responses in mice.

The neural mechanisms that underlie the maintenance of social bonds between prairie voles suggest that social support networks may be a powerful way of treating addiction.

Different dynorphins, which signal similarly from the cell surface, can differentially localize G protein-coupled receptors to specific subcellular compartments and cause divergent receptor fates and distinct spatiotemporal patterns of signaling.

Opioid sensitive neurons were identified using a traceless affinity labeling strategy to covalently label endogenous mu-opioid receptors with fluorescent compounds in living brain slices from wild type animals.

Chemically distinct opioid ligands promote selective protein recruitment by opioid receptors in intact cells.

The arcuate nucleus kisspeptin neurons express multiple transmitters but use only the neuropeptide kisspeptin to drive the episodic secretion of gonadotropin-releasing hormone.

Linking deep mutational scanning with engineered transcriptional reporters in human cell lines establishes a generalizable method for exploring pharmacogenomics, structure, and function across broad classes of drug receptors.