Abstract: The adenosine receptor subfamily of G-protein coupled receptors is an important family of membrane receptors that modulate blood pressure, and more recently have been implicated in cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, and diabetes, making them a significant fraction of drug discovery efforts. As multipass membrane proteins, G protein coupled receptors remain challenging but important targets of drug discovery, and our efforts have enabled the high-level expression of the adenosine family of receptors. Adenosine A2A receptor (A2AR), one of four subfamily members, has a longer C-terminus than the other adenosine receptor subtypes, which may contribute to its exceptional trafficking to the plasma membrane, but its flexibility has been attributed to protein-protein interactions. In this talk I will discuss some of our expression and protein trafficking engineering, particularly related to creating protein chimeras. In addition, I will descript the in-depth biophysical characterization of adenosine receptors purified in both micelles and nanodiscs, and their binding to ligands and G-proteins, and how their membrane environment effects active state properties, including binding kinetics.
Bio: Anne Skaja Robinson is the Trustee Professor and Department Head of Chemical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Robinson completed her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Chemical Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University, and then moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for her Ph.D. She is the author of over 100 peer-reviewed publications, a coauthor on the textbook, Mass and Heat Transfer, and has trained 34 PhD students, five postdoctoral researchers, and hundreds of undergraduates. Her scientific achievements have been recognized by several awards, including an NSF Presidential Early Career Award (PECASE) and the Society for Biological Engineering (SBE)’s Biotechnology Progress Award. The ACS BIOT Division recognized Dr. Robinson’s scientific achievements by awarding her the David Perlman Memorial Lectureship in 2015 and the Marvin Johnson Award in Microbial and Biochemical Technology in 2022. In 2016, she was named a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.
10:30-11:30 a.m., refreshments to follow