Figure 5.

Pharmacologic properties of melanocortin agonist, α-MSH and hACTH (1–24) at HEK-293 transiently expressing both MC4R (upper panels) or MC5Ra (lower panels) and different MRAPs (■, MC4R; ♦, MC4R+MRAP1; •, MC4R+MRAP2a; ▴, MC4R+MRAP2b) but stably expressing a cAMP-responsive β-galactosidase reporter gene. Data were normalized to protein levels and expressed as percentage of the basal levels. A construct carrying luciferase gene under the control of a constitutive promoter was also transfected to standardize the transfection levels. Experiments were performed using quadruplicate data points and repeated at least 3 times independently. Data are mean ± SEM of the 3 independent experiments.