The Research on the Relationship Between Adrenergic Receptor Subtypes

The adrenergic receptors, which control the regulation of blood pressure, energy homeostasis and metabolism of glucose and lipids within the body, are a class of G protein-coupled receptors and a class of the most important receptors within the body. Adrenergic receptors are grouped into three types, alpha₁, alpha₂ and beta. Within each type, Molecular biological studies revealed further subtypes, they are designated as alpha_1A, alpha_1B, alpha_1D, alpha_2D, beta₁, beta₂, beta₃. Biological studies found that some subtypes interact with others in certain tissues, which means there are relations between these subtypes. Currently there have been fewer reports about the relationship between adrenergic receptor subtypes with a lack of selective agonists. Here we use bioinformatics tools and strategies to study the relationship between adrenergic receptor subtypes from three aspects, including molecular evolution, sequence similarity and protein-protein interaction. Finally we find that within the alpha₁ three subtypes the evolution distance between alpha_1A and alpha_1B is relatively nearer, and their sequence similarity is higher; within the alpha₂ three subtypes the evolution distance between alpha_2A and alpha_2C is relatively nearer, and their sequence similarity is higher. From the protein-protein aspect we find that alpha_1A is directly interacting with beta₁, the three subtypes of alpha₁ as well as beta₁ have more interacting proteins, and hence they are more active within the body.