Monitoring Opioid Receptor Interaction in Living Cells by Bioluminescence Resonance Energy Transfer (BRET).

Bioluminescence resonance energy transfer (BRET ) is a natural phenomenon that has been successfully applied for the study of protein-protein interactions, including opioid receptor oligomers. The discovery of opioid receptor homomers and heteromers has brought to the discovery of new functions and new way of signaling and trafficking; therefore, opioid receptor oligomers may be considered as novel drug targets. Fusing receptors of interest with Renilla luciferase and with a fluorescent protein (such as EYFP ) it is possible to study opioid receptor dimerization using BRET .