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Techniques: Use of concatenated subunits for the study of ligand-gated ion channels.
Journal article

Techniques: Use of concatenated subunits for the study of ligand-gated ion channels.

  • Minier F Department of Pharmacology, University of Bern, Friedbühlstr. 49, CH-3010 Bern, Switzerland.
  • Sigel E
  • 2004-11-24
Published in:
  • Trends in pharmacological sciences. - 2004
Animals
DNA, Concatenated
Humans
Ion Channel Gating
Ion Channels
Ligands
Protein Subunits
Receptors, GABA-A
English Members of the pentameric ligand-gated ion channel family, comprising GABA(A) receptors, nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, glycine receptors and 5-HT3 receptors, are involved in information transfer at both synapses and the neuromuscular junction. However, receptors that are composed of five subunits are difficult to analyse by recombinant expression of a mixture of the single subunits because multiple receptor subtypes with different subunit composition or arrangement can be formed. Covalently linking the C-terminus of the preceding subunit with the N-terminus of the following subunit to form a concatenated subunit enables the precise predetermination of subunit arrangement in these receptors. A forced subunit assembly enables the characterization of: (i) receptor architecture; (ii) properties of receptors that contain different subunit isoforms in specific locations; and (iii) selective introduction of a mutation into a specific subunit that occurs multiple times in a receptor. Thus, this method also facilitates the investigation of positional effects of mutations associated with diseases.
Language
  • English
Open access status
closed
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://sonar.ch/global/documents/1036
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