The lutropin/chorionicgonadotropin receptor (LHR) is a member of the rhodopsin-like subfamily of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) that have been shown to mediate the internalization of its five (activation: three; inactivation: two) naturally occurring mutation. Gonadotropin receptors are members of the seven transmembrane (TM) receptor families. Several point mutations in TM II, III, V and VI have been identified in the luteinizing hormone receptor (LHR) gene, leading to constitutive activation and inactivation of the receptor. In eelLHR, we generated 3 types of constitutive activating mutations (M410T, L469R and D590Y) and 2 types of constitutive inactivating mutations (D383N and Y546F) to investigate how they work on hormone-receptor interaction.
To assess the functional effects of 5 receptor mutations directly, wild-type (WT) and mutant receptors were transiently expressed in CHO-K1 cells. We evaluated the basal and cAMP stimulation by rec-LH hormone. The activity was shown to be a dose-dependent increase in cAMP production in LHR-WT expressing cells with an EC50 of 24.3 ng/ml and basal cAMP level of 2.6 nM. However, three activation mutants (D590Y, L469R and M410T) was most elevated the basal cAMP response at 12.8, 21.7 and 6.1 nM, respectively. In two inactivation mutants (D383N and Y546F) are very low in the basal cAMP activation. The EC50 was also considerably decreased to 42.3 ng/ml and 1181 ng/ml, respectively.