NanoBRET in C. elegans illuminates functional receptor interactions in real time

BACKGROUND: Protein-protein interactions form the basis of every organism and thus, investigating their dynamics, intracellular protein localization, trafficking and interactions of distinct proteins such as receptors and their ligand-binding are of general interest. Bioluminescence resonance energy transfer (BRET) is a powerful tool to investigate these aspects in vitro. Since in vitro approaches mostly neglect the more complex in vivo situation, we established BRET as an in vivo tool for studying protein interactions in the nematode C. elegans. RESULTS: We generated worms expressing NanoBRET sensors and elucidated the interaction of two ligand-G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) pairs, the neuropeptide receptor NPR-11 and the Adhesion GPCR LAT-1. Furthermore, we adapted the enhanced bystander BRET technology to measure subcellular protein localization. Using this approach, we traced ligand-induced internalization of NPR-11 in vivo. CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate that in vivo NanoBRET is a tool to investigate specific protein interactions and localization in a physiological setting in real time in the living organism C. elegans. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12860-022-00405-w.