For sugar to taste sweet and for coffee to be stimulating, or even for light to be seen, first they all need to land on a G protein-coupled receptor. Ubiquitous and diverse, these receptors are a cell’s chemical detection system: they sense substances in the surroundings and initiate intracellular pathways that underlie virtually all physiological processes—from taste and vision to hormonal regulation and neuronal communication. Nearly a third of all therapeutic drugs act by binding to these cell-surface receptors.
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Source: Phys.org