Opioid receptors revealed

摘要

On a small table in his office at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, Ray Stevens spreads out a sheet of paper covered with colourful branched lines, each sprouting and thinning before terminating in an esoteric code. "This is the dream," he declares. The intricate diagram represents the largest family of receptor proteins encoded in the genome - the G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), ubiquitous cell-surface molecules that are activated by light, odours, hormones and neurotrans-mitters. Stevens wants to determine the atomic structures of receptors on all branches of the tree.