Glutamate receptor complexes open up and reveal their molecular dialect

Plested, Andrew J. R.

doi:10.1038/d41586-021-01380-6

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02 June 2021
Correction 07 June 2021

Glutamate receptor complexes open up and reveal their molecular dialect

AMPA receptors are a class of protein complexes crucial for neuronal communication. Two complementary studies converge on structures of AMPA receptors found in a brain region called the hippocampus.

Andrew J. R. Plested⁰

Andrew J. R. Plested
1. Andrew J. R. Plested is at the Humboldt University Berlin, the Leibniz Institute for Molecular Pharmacology and the NeuroCure Cluster of Excellence, Berlin, Germany.
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Dialects distinguish Berliners from Bavarians, and New Yorkers from New Englanders, reflecting differences not only in speakers’ geographical location, but also in their culture and history. At first glance, it seems unlikely that such diversity would exist among AMPA receptors — a class of protein complexes activated by the neurotransmitter molecule glutamate during neuronal communication. These crucial receptors are found everywhere in the brain, but the protein subunits that form their central channel structure are encoded by just four genes, suggesting there might be little scope for them to have distinctive molecular ‘accents’ in different brain regions. However, proteomic studies suggest that AMPA receptors could in fact be large complexes with many extra subunits, which have been challenging to isolate. Writing in Nature, Yu et al.¹ and Zhang et al.² provide complementary views of the structure of AMPA receptors from the hippocampus, a brain region central to memory, to show the molecular accents that colour their native ‘language’.

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Nature 594, 338-339 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01380-6

Updates & Corrections

Correction 07 June 2021: The original version of this article said that Yu et al. used nanobodies in their study, but they actually used antibody fragments.

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