G protein-coupled receptor kinases (GRKs) orchestrate biased agonism at the beta(2)-adrenergic receptor

Biased agonists of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), which selectively activate either G protein- or beta-arrestin-mediated signaling pathways, are of major therapeutic interest because they have the potential to show improved efficacy and specificity as drugs. Efforts to understand the mechanistic basis of this phenomenon have focused on the hypothesis that G proteins and beta-arrestins preferentially couple to distinct GPCR conformations. However, because GPCR kinase (GRK)-dependent receptor phosphorylation is a critical prerequisite for the recruitment of beta-arrestins to most GPCRs, GRKs themselves may play an important role in establishing biased signaling. We showed that an alanine mutant of the highly conserved residue tyrosine 219 (Y219A) in transmembrane domain five of the beta(2)-adrenergic receptor (beta(2)AR) was incapable of beta-arrestin recruitment, receptor internalization, and beta-arrestin-mediated activation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK), whereas it retained the ability to signal through G protein. We found that the impaired beta-arrestin recruitment in cells was due to reduced GRK-mediated phosphorylation of the beta(2)AR Y219A C terminus, which was recapitulated in vitro with purified components. Furthermore, in vitro ligation of a synthetically phosphorylated peptide onto the C terminus of beta(2)AR Y219A rescued both the initial recruitment of beta-arrestin and its engagement with the intracellular core of the receptor. These data suggest that the Y219A mutation generates a G protein-biased state primarily by conformational selection against GRK coupling, rather than against beta-arrestin. Together, these findings highlight the importance of GRKs in modulating the biased agonism of GPCRs.