Crystal structure of glucagon-like peptide-1 in complex with the extracellular domain of the glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor
Underwood, C.R., Garibay, P., Knudsen, L.B., Hastrup, S., Peters, G.H., Rudolph, R., Reedtz-Runge, S.(2010) J Biol Chem 285: 723-730
- PubMed: 19861722 
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1074/jbc.M109.033829
- Primary Citation of Related Structures:  
3IOL - PubMed Abstract: 
GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) is an incretin released from intestinal L-cells in response to food intake. Activation of the GLP-1 receptor potentiates the synthesis and release of insulin from pancreatic beta-cells in a glucose-dependent manner. The GLP-1 receptor belongs to class B of the G-protein-coupled receptors, a subfamily characterized by a large N-terminal extracellular ligand binding domain. Exendin-4 and GLP-1 are 50% identical, and exendin-4 is a full agonist with similar affinity and potency for the GLP-1 receptor. We recently solved the crystal structure of the GLP-1 receptor extracellular domain in complex with the competitive antagonist exendin-4(9-39). Interestingly, the isolated extracellular domain binds exendin-4 with much higher affinity than the endogenous agonist GLP-1. Here, we have solved the crystal structure of the extracellular domain in complex with GLP-1 to 2.1 Aresolution. The structure shows that important hydrophobic ligand-receptor interactions are conserved in agonist- and antagonist-bound forms of the extracellular domain, but certain residues in the ligand-binding site adopt a GLP-1-specific conformation. GLP-1 is a kinked but continuous alpha-helix from Thr(13) to Val(33) when bound to the extracellular domain. We supplemented the crystal structure with site-directed mutagenesis to link the structural information of the isolated extracellular domain with the binding properties of the full-length receptor. The data support the existence of differences in the binding modes of GLP-1 and exendin-4 on the full-length GLP-1 receptor.
Organizational Affiliation: 
Department of GLP-1 and Obesity Biology, Novo Nordisk, 2760 Måløv, Denmark.