adhesion receptors, subfamily B2 of the class B family of seven-transmembrane G protein-coupled receptors
The B2 subfamily of class B GPCRs consists of cell-adhesion receptors with 33 members in humans and vertebrates. The adhesion receptors are characterized by the presence of large N-terminal extracellular domains containing a variety of structural motifs, which play critical roles in cell-cell adhesion and cell-matrix interactions, linked to a class B seven-transmembrane domain. These include, for example, EGF (epidermal growth factor)-like domains in CD97, Celsr1 (cadherin family member), Celsr2, Celsr3, EMR1 (EGF-module-containing mucin-like hormone receptor-like 1), EMR2, EMR3, and Flamingo; two laminin A G-type repeats and nine cadherin domains in Flamingo and its human orthologs Celsr1, Celsr2 and Celsr3; olfactomedin-like domains in the latrotoxin receptors; and five or four thrombospondin type 1 repeats in BAI1 (brain-specific angiogenesis inhibitor 1), BAI2 and BAI3. Furthermore, almost all adhesion receptors, except GPR123, contain an evolutionarily conserved GPCR- autoproteolysis inducing (GAIN) domain that undergoes autoproteolytic processing at the GPCR proteolysis site (GPS) motif located immediately N-terminal to the first transmembrane region, to generate N- and C-terminal fragments (NTF and CTF), which may serve important biological functions.