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Artist's commentary
morphine-chan is working
When binding to μOR receptor, morphine adopts an elliptical ‘‘O’’ configuration, interacting with hydrophobic residues from TM3, TM6, and TM7 of transmembrane domain. Morphene can fully activate μOR to inhibit the production of cAMP. It can not only activate G protein signaling pathways, but also induce β-arrestin recruitment [1].
[1] Zhuang Y, H. Eric Xu, Xin Xie, Ming-Wei Wan, et al. Molecular recognition of morphine and fentanyl by the human μ-
opioid receptor. Cell. 2022 Nov
10;185(23):4361-4375.e19.