Ca(2+)/Sr(2+) Selectivity in Calcium-Sensing Receptor (CaSR): Implications for Strontium’s Anti-Osteoporosis Effect

The extracellular calcium-sensing receptor (CaSR) controls vital bone cell functions such as cell growth, differentiation and apoptosis. The binding of the native agonist (Ca(2+)) to CaSR activates the receptor, which undergoes structural changes that trigger a cascade of events along the cellular signaling pathways. Strontium (in the form of soluble salts) has been found to also be a CaSR agonist. The activation of the receptor by Sr(2+) is considered to be the major mechanism through which strontium exerts its anti-osteoporosis effect, mostly in postmenopausal women. Strontium-activated CaSR initiates a series of signal transduction events resulting in both osteoclast apoptosis and osteoblast differentiation, thus strengthening the bone tissue. The intimate mechanism of Sr(2+) activation of CaSR is still enigmatic. Herewith, by employing a combination of density functional theory (DFT) calculations and polarizable continuum model (PCM) computations, we have found that the Ca(2+) binding sites 1, 3, and 4 in the activated CaSR, although possessing a different number and type of protein ligands, overall structure and charge state, are all selective for Ca(2+) over Sr(2+). The three binding sites, regardless of their structural differences, exhibit almost equal metal selectivity if they are flexible and have no geometrical constraints on the incoming Sr(2+). In contrast to Ca(2+) and Sr(2+), Mg(2+) constructs, when allowed to fully relax during the optimization process, adopt their stringent six-coordinated octahedral structure at the expense of detaching a one-backbone carbonyl ligand and shifting it to the second coordination layer of the metal. The binding of Mg(2+) and Sr(2+) to a rigid/inflexible calcium-designed binding pocket requires an additional energy penalty for the binding ion; however, the price for doing so (to be paid by Sr(2+)) is much less than that of Mg(2+). The results obtained delineate the key factors controlling the competition between metal cations for the receptor and shed light on some aspects of strontium’s therapeutic effects.