The cloning of the glutamate-gated ion channels of the brain revealed an unexpected level of complexity: there are many different genes that encode distinct subunits of the receptor/channel complex and an even larger number of possible receptor subunit combinations. Many--nearly all--of these gene products are expressed in the retina, and the questions that we face today are: how are they used ...

How neuronal proteomes self-organize is poorly understood because of their inherent molecular and cellular complexity. Here, focusing on mammalian synapses we use blue-native PAGE and 'gene-tagging' of GluN1 to report the first biochemical purification of endogenous NMDA receptors (NMDARs) directly from adult mouse brain. We show that NMDARs partition between two discrete populations of recepto...

Introduction Gene-environment interactions increase psychosis risk (Gayer-Anderson et al . Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol 2020; 55(5):645-657). However, identifying the genetic variants involved and how they interact with environmental factors underlying remains challenging. Objectives To investigate whether there are gene-environment in relationships of childhood trauma, lifetime cannabis ...

A 163-base pair enhancer in the CYP2B2 5' flank confers phenobarbital (PB) inducibility and constitutes a PB response unit (PBRU). By transfection of primary hepatocytes, we analyzed the function of elements comprising the PBRU and evaluated the role of the constitutive androstane receptor (CAR) in PB responsiveness. A 51-base pair PB-responsive enhancer module (PBREM) within the PBRU confers n...

The glutamatergic signaling pathway represents an ideal candidate susceptibility system for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Disruption of specific N-methyl-D-aspartate-type glutamate receptor subunit genes (GRIN1, 2A-D) in mice leads to significant alterations in cognitive and/or locomotor behavior including impairments in latent learning, spatial memory tasks and hyperactivity...

Alternative pre-mRNA splicing is frequently used to expand the protein-coding capacity of genomes, and to regulate gene expression at the post-transcriptional level. It is a significant challenge to decipher the molecular language of tissue-specific splicing because the inherent flexibility of these mechanisms is specified by numerous short sequence motifs distributed in introns and exons. In t...

NMDA receptors (NMDA-Rs) are ionotropic glutamate receptors, which associate with LDL-receptor-related protein-1 (LRP1) to trigger cell signaling in response to protein ligands in neurons. Here, we demonstrate for the first time that the NMDA-R is expressed by rat Schwann cells and functions independently and with LRP1 to regulate Schwann cell physiology. The NR1 (encoded by GRIN1) and NR2b (en...

The striatum is composed predominantly of medium spiny neurons (MSNs) that integrate excitatory, glutamatergic inputs from the cortex and thalamus, and modulatory dopaminergic inputs from the ventral midbrain to influence behavior. Glutamatergic activation of AMPA, NMDA, and metabotropic receptors on MSNs is important for striatal development and function, but the roles of each of these recepto...

The primary motor cortex has an important role in the precise execution of learned motor responses. During motor learning, synaptic efficacy between sensory and primary motor cortical neurons is enhanced, possibly involving long-term potentiation and N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA)-specific glutamate receptor function. To investigate whether NMDA receptor in the primary motor cortex can act as a co...