Sphingosine 1-phosphate (S1P) is a biologically active lysophospholipid that transmits signals through a family of five G-protein-coupled receptors to regulate cell proliferation, migration, cytoskeletal organization, and differentiation (Spiegel and Milstien , 2003).
S1P5 can couple with Gi/o and G12/13, and it mediates S1P induced adenylate cyclase inhibition and Ca2+ mobilization like the other S1P receptors. However, unlike the other S1P receptors, it mediates inhibition of MAPK activation and cell proliferation (Im et al., 2000). S1P5 is predominantly expressed in the white matter tracts and oligodendrocytes and is particularly abundant in the anterior commissure, corpus collosum, and optic tract (Terai et al., 2003). S1P induces process retraction in pre-oligodendrocytes and supports cell survival in mature oligodendrocytes by activating S1P5, which indicates a role for S1P5 in maturation and myelination of oligodendrocytes (Jaillard et al., 2005). Millipore's S1P5 membrane preparations are crude membrane preparations made from our proprietary stable recombinant cell lines to ensure high-level of GPCR surface expression; thus, they are ideal HTS tools for screening of S1P5 interactions with its ligands. The membrane preparations exhibit EC50s of 2.4 nM for S1P in a GTPγS binding assay.