| Structural highlights
Disease
[OREX_HUMAN] Defects in HCRT are the cause of narcolepsy type 1 (NRCLP1) [MIM:161400]. Narcolepsy is a neurological disabling sleep disorder, characterized by excessive daytime sleepiness, sleep fragmentation, symptoms of abnormal rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep, such as cataplexy, hypnagogic hallucinations, and sleep paralysis. Cataplexy is a sudden loss of muscle tone triggered by emotions, which is the most valuable clinical feature used to diagnose narcolepsy. Human narcolepsy is primarily a sporadically occurring disorder but familial clustering has been observed. Note=Human narcolepsy is associated with a deficient orexin system. Orexins are absent and/or greatly diminished in the brain and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of most narcoleptic patients.[1]
Function
[OREX_HUMAN] Neuropeptides that play a significant role in the regulation of food intake and sleep-wakefulness, possibly by coordinating the complex behavioral and physiologic responses of these complementary homeostatic functions. A broader role in the homeostatic regulation of energy metabolism, autonomic function, hormonal balance and the regulation of body fluids, is also suggested. Orexin-A binds to both OX1R and OX2R with a high affinity, whereas orexin-B binds only to OX2R with a similar high affinity.
Publication Abstract from PubMed
Orexins-A and B, also called hypocretins-1 and 2, respectively, are neuropeptides that regulate feeding and sleep-wakefulness by binding to two orphan G protein-coupled receptors named orexin-1 (OX(1)R) and orexin-2 (OX(2)R). The sequences and functions of orexins-A and B are similar to each other, but the high sequence homology (68%) is limited in their C-terminal half regions (residues 15-33). The sequence of the N-terminal half region of orexin-A (residues 1-14), containing two disulfide bonds, is very different from that of orexin-B. The structure of orexin-A was determined using two-dimensional homonuclear and (15)N and (13)C natural abundance heteronuclear NMR experiments. Orexin-A had a compact conformation in the N-terminal half region, which contained a short helix (III:Cys6-Gln9) and was fixed by the two disulfide bonds, and a helix-turn-helix conformation (I:Leu16-Ala23 and II:Asn25-Thr32) in the remaining C-terminal half region. The C-terminal half region had both hydrophobic and hydrophilic residues, which existed on separate surfaces to provide an amphipathic character in helices I and II. The nine residues on the hydrophobic surface are also well conserved in orexin-B, and it was reported that the substitution of each of them with alanine resulted in a significant drop in the functional potency at the receptors. Therefore, we suggest that they form the surface responsible for the main hydrophobic interaction with the receptors. On the other hand, the residues on the hydrophilic surface, together with the hydrophilic residues in the N-terminal half region that form a cluster, are known to make only small contributions to the binding to the receptors through similar alanine-scan experiments. However, since our structure of orexin-A showed that large conformational and electrostatical differences between orexins-A and B were rather concentrated in the N-terminal half regions, we suggest that the region of orexin-A is important for the preference for orexin-A of OX(1)R.
Orexin-A is composed of a highly conserved C-terminal and a specific, hydrophilic N-terminal region, revealing the structural basis of specific recognition by the orexin-1 receptor.,Takai T, Takaya T, Nakano M, Akutsu H, Nakagawa A, Aimoto S, Nagai K, Ikegami T J Pept Sci. 2006 Jul;12(7):443-54. PMID:16429482[2]
From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
See Also
References
- ↑ Peyron C, Faraco J, Rogers W, Ripley B, Overeem S, Charnay Y, Nevsimalova S, Aldrich M, Reynolds D, Albin R, Li R, Hungs M, Pedrazzoli M, Padigaru M, Kucherlapati M, Fan J, Maki R, Lammers GJ, Bouras C, Kucherlapati R, Nishino S, Mignot E. A mutation in a case of early onset narcolepsy and a generalized absence of hypocretin peptides in human narcoleptic brains. Nat Med. 2000 Sep;6(9):991-7. PMID:10973318 doi:10.1038/79690
- ↑ Takai T, Takaya T, Nakano M, Akutsu H, Nakagawa A, Aimoto S, Nagai K, Ikegami T. Orexin-A is composed of a highly conserved C-terminal and a specific, hydrophilic N-terminal region, revealing the structural basis of specific recognition by the orexin-1 receptor. J Pept Sci. 2006 Jul;12(7):443-54. PMID:16429482 doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/psc.747
|
