Predicted structure and cell signaling of TAS2R14 reveal receptor hyper-flexibility for detecting diverse bitter tastes

The 25 human bitter taste receptors (TAS2Rs) are expressed on taste and extra-oral cells representing an integrated chemosensory system. The archetypal TAS2R14 is activated by > 150 topographically diverse agonists, raising the question of how this uncharacteristic accommodation is achieved for these GPCRs. We report the computationally derived structure of TAS2R14 with binding sites and energies for five highly diverse agonists. Remarkably, the binding pocket is the same for all five agonists. The energies derived from molecular dynamics are consistent with experiments determining signal transduction coefficients in live cells. TAS2R14 accommodates agonists through the breaking of a TMD3 H-bond instead of the prototypic strong salt bridge, a TMD1,2,7 interaction different from Class A GPCRs, and agonist-promoted TMD3 salt bridges for high affinity (which we confirmed by receptor mutagenesis). Thus, the broadly tuned TAS2Rs accommodate diverse agonists via a single (vs multiple) binding pocket through unique TM interactions for sensing disparate micro-environments.