Figure 5: Cholesterol volumetric maps and contact frequency.
From: Membrane cholesterol access into a G-protein-coupled receptor
(a) Volumetric maps of cholesterol density around the aligned structure of the A2AR (white cartoon) for replica 1 (yellow), 2 (green), 3 (red) and 4 (orange). Density maps for individual replicas 1–4 can be also seen in Supplementary Fig. 10. Experimentally observed cholesterol molecule in the recently published high-resolution structure of Liu et al.24 (PDB:4EIY) is shown in cyan surface. Protein is viewed from the extracellular side, helices are labelled and loops are not depicted for clarity. (b) Normalized contact frequency (%) (y axis) of cholesterol molecules (x axis) interacting with the A2AR (that is, below 2.9 Å) during each 1 μs trajectory (replicas 1, 2, 3 and 4). Here we consider cholesterol–A2AR binding interactions to be stable or transient when the normalized contact frequency is above (dark grey bars) or below (light grey bars) 95%, respectively.
