Interactions of the Sweet Protein Brazzein with the Sweet Taste Receptor

Abstract

Brazzein is a small, potently sweet protein. Homology modeling has been used to construct a model of the ligand-binding domain of the sweet taste receptor, and low-resolution docking has been used to identify potential modes of brazzein-receptor binding. Published brazzein mutation-taste data were then used to select one of these as the most likely brazzein-receptor binding orientation. This orientation places brazzein in contact primarily with the T1R2 subunit of the receptor, and it accounts for 21 of the 23 mutation results examined.