After decades of meticulous research initiated by the Nobel-prizewinning discovery of G proteins1, you might think that scientists know all there is to know about this crucial family of signalling proteins. Not so. In a paper in Nature by Stahl et al.2, and in a companion paper in Nature Communications by Bohn and Stahl3, researchers describe a twist on G-protein signalling that might hold the key to the rational design of opioid drugs with better pain-relieving capabilities and fewer unwanted side effects than those that are currently available.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-03810-1
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Competing Interests The author declares no competing interests.
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