Bioinformatics approaches for the classification of G-protein-coupled receptors

G-protein-coupled receptors are found abundantly in the human genome, and are the targets of numerous prescribed drugs. However, many receptors remain orphaned (i.e. with unknown ligand specificity), and others remain poorly characterised, with little structural information available. Consequently, there is often a gulf between sequence data and structural and functional knowledge of a receptor. Bioinformatics approaches may offer one approach to bridging this gap. In particular, protein family databases, which distil information from multiple sequence alignments into characteristic signatures, could be used to identify the families to which orphan receptors belong, and might facilitate discovery of novel motifs associated with ligand binding and G-protein-coupling.