Determinig the ligand-specific regions of peptide-binding G-Protein Coupled Receptors

The G-Protein Coupled Receptor (GPCR) proteins are of paramount importance for pharmaceutical research as this single family of proteins is targeted by more than 50% of all modern drugs. Their ligands include but are not limited to small molecules, peptides and photons. Consequently it is vital to know the sites of interaction between the ligand and the receptor. These sites can be used for a multitude of purposes such as classification of sequences or drug design. We use the feature extraction method proposed in to analyze the ligand-specific regions among various Peptide-binding GPCRs. We present the features that will help drug design researchers enhance specificity of peptide-binding drugs.