The G-protein signal desensitation (GSD) domain

A common motif in terminating G-protein mediated signals.

This page is based on the poster:
Hofmann K. and Bucher P. Conserved sequence domains in cell cycle regulatory proteins presented at the joint ISREC/AACR meeting "Cancer and the Cell cycle", January 1996 in Lausanne.

Short description

This domain is a novel sequence motif found in several proteins working in signaling by heterotrimeric G-proteins. The domain has first been described by Koelle et al [1] in the context of the C.elegans G-protein signaling regulator egl-10. By profile analysis we have demonstrated that the G-protein coupled receptor kinases, which phosphorylate the activated receptor and thus desensitize them, also contain a copy of the GSD domain in their N-terminus. This region has been previously demonstrated to be responsible for the specific interaction with the receptors. Since most other proteins containing GSD domains interact with Ga-subunits, a participation of Ga in the recptor/kinase recognition is suggested.

Sequences containing single or multiple copies of the GSD domain include:

PROSITE

The FHA domain will be included in PROSITE under the accession numbers PS50029 for the data entry, and PDOC50029 for the documentation entry. The alignment used for construction of the profile is available in MSF format. There is also an updated list of database sequences containing GSD domains.

Domain cartoons

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Abbreviations: GSD: GSD-domain; PH: PH-domain; GPg: G-protein gamma subunit homology; black box: GRK-specific extension of the kinase domain.
Links to WWW-pages describing some of these domains can be found near the bottom of this page.

Alignment of representative sequences

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Note: You can check your sequence for the occurence of this and other domains by using the ProfileScan server.
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