Type A γ-aminobutyric acid receptors (GABARs) are the principal mediators of inhibitory neurotransmission in the human brain. Endogenous neurosteroids interact with GABARs to regulate acute and chronic anxiety and are potent sedative, analgesic, anticonvulsant and anesthetic agents. Their mode of binding and mechanism of receptor potentiation, however, remain unknown. Here we report crystal structures of a chimeric GABAR construct in apo and pregnanolone-bound states. The neurosteroid-binding site is mechanically coupled to the helices lining the ion channel pore and modulates the desensitization-gate conformation. We demonstrate that the equivalent site is responsible for physiological, heteromeric GABAR potentiation and explain the contrasting modulatory properties of 3a versus 3b neurosteroid epimers. These results illustrate how peripheral lipid ligands can regulate the desensitization gate of GABARs, a process of broad relevance to pentameric ligand-gated ion channels.

Structural, biochemical and biophysical studies of eukaryotic soluble and membrane proteins require their production to milligram quantities. Although large-scale protein expression strategies based on transient or stable transfection of mammalian cells are well established, they are associated with high consumable costs, limited transfection efficiency or long and tedious selection of clonal cell lines. Lentiviral transduction is an efficient method for the delivery of transgenes to mammalian cells and unifies the ease of use and speed of transient transfection with the robust expression of stable cell lines. In this Protocol, we describe the design and step-by-step application of a lentiviral plasmid suite, termed pHR-CMV-TetO2, for the constitutive or inducible large-scale production of soluble and membrane proteins in HEK293 cell lines. Optional features include bicistronic co-expression of fluorescent marker proteins for enrichment of co-transduced cells using cell sorting, and of biotin ligase for in vivo biotinylation. We demonstrate the efficacy of the method for a set of soluble proteins and for the G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) Smoothened (SMO). We further compare this method with baculovirus transduction of mammalian cells (BacMam), using the type-A γ-aminobutyric acid receptor (GABAAR) β3 homopentamer as a test case. The protocols described here are optimized for simplicity, speed and affordability, lead to a stable polyclonal cell line and milligram-scale amounts of protein in 3-4 weeks, and routinely achieve a ~3-10-fold improvement in protein production yield per cell as compared to transient transduction or transfection.