Optical tools for visualizing and controlling human GLP-1 receptor activation with high spatiotemporal resolution

The glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor (GLP1R) is a broadly expressed target of peptide hormones with essential roles in energy and glucose homeostasis, as well as of the blockbuster weight-loss drugs semaglutide and liraglutide. Despite its large clinical relevance, tools to investigate the precise activation dynamics of this receptor with high spatiotemporal resolution are limited. Here we introduce a novel genetically-encoded sensor based on the engineering of a circularly-permuted green fluorescent protein into the human GLP1R, named GLPLight1. We demonstrate that fluorescence signal from GLPLight1 accurately reports the expected receptor conformational activation in response to pharmacological ligands with high sensitivity (max ΔF/F₀= 528%) and temporal resolution (τ_ON= 4.7 sec). We further demonstrated that GLPLight1 shows comparable responses to GLP-1 derivatives as observed for the native receptor. Using GLPLight1, we established an all-optical assay to characterize a novel photocaged GLP-1 derivative (photo-GLP1) and to demonstrate optical control of GLP1R activation. Thus, the new all-optical toolkit introduced here enhances our ability to study GLP1R activation with high spatiotemporal resolution.