Approach to the specificity and selectivity between D2 and D3 receptors by mutagenesis and binding experiments part I: Expression and characterization of D2 and D3 receptor mutants

D3/D2 sub-specificity is a complex problem to solve. Indeed, in the absence of easy structural biology of the G-protein coupled receptors, and despite key progresses in this area, the systematic knowledge of the ligand/receptor relationship is difficult to obtain. Due to these structural biology limitations concerning membrane proteins, we favored the use of directed mutagenesis to document a rational towards the discovery of markedly specific D3 ligands over D2 ligands together with basic binding experiments. Using our methodology of stable expression of receptors in HEK cells, we constructed the gene encoding for 24 mutants and 4 chimeras of either D2 or D3 receptors and expressed them stably. Those cell lines, expressing a single copy of one receptor mutant each, were stably constructed, selected, amplified and the membranes from them were prepared. Binding data at those receptors were obtained using standard binding conditions for D2 and D3 dopamine receptors. We generated 26 new molecules derived from D2 or D3 ligands. Using 8 reference compounds and those 26 molecules, we characterized their binding at those mutants and chimeras, exemplifying an approach to better understand the difference at the molecular level of the D2 and D3 receptors. Although all the individual results are presented and could be used for minute analyses, the present report does not discuss the differences between D2 and D3 data. It simply shows the feasibility of the approach and its potential.