Patent ID: 7846671

Claim:
A method of screening to identify a candidate agent that agonizes interaction of a regulator of G protein signaling (RGS) polypeptide and a G protein subunit alpha q (Gαq) polypeptide, said method comprising: (a) contacting a RGS polypeptide and a Gαq polypeptide with a candidate agent, wherein said RGS polypeptide comprises an amino acid sequence having at least 95% sequence identity with the amino acid sequence of human RGS2 (SEQ ID NO.: 26), human RGS6 (SEQ ID NO.:27), human RGS7 (SEQ ID NO.:7), human RGS9 (SEQ ID NO.:11), or human RGS11 (SEQ ID NO.:9), and, wherein said Gαq polypeptide comprises an amino acid sequence having at least 95% sequence identity with the amino acid sequence of human Gαq (SEQ ID NO.:13); (b) detecting an amount of binding of said RGS polypeptide to said Gαq polypeptide in the presence of the candidate agent; (c) detecting a reference amount of binding of said RGS polypeptide to said Gαq polypeptide in the absence of the candidate agent; and (d) comparing the amount of binding of said RGS polypeptide to said Gαq polypeptide in the presence of the candidate agent to the reference amount of binding, wherein an increase in the amount of binding detected in the presence of the candidate agent relative to the reference amount of binding indicates that the candidate agent binds to said RGS polypeptide or Gαq polypeptide, and agonizes interaction of RGS and Gαq, and wherein said candidate agent is not a guanine nucleotide.