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The Journal of Neuroscience, December 15, 2000, 20(24):9025-9033

Unequal Expression of Allelic Kainate Receptor GluR7 mRNAs in Human Brains

Hans H. Schiffer1, Geoffrey T. Swanson1, Elizier Masliah2, and Stephen F. Heinemann1

1 Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California 92037, and 2 Department of Neurosciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92039-0624

We describe here the first example of an exonic polymorphism that affects the primary structure of a human ionotropic glutamate receptor. The human kainate receptor GluR7 gene contains a thymine (T)/guanine (G) nucleotide variation that determines a serine or alanine at position 310 in the extracellular region of GluR7 receptor subunits. Our finding contrasts with a previous report that suggested that GluR7 transcripts were RNA-edited at this site. Whole-cell patch-clamp recordings did not detect differences in receptor activation and desensitization between the human GluR7 receptor isoforms expressed in HEK-293 cells. Analysis of 41 tissue samples obtained from 30 human brains revealed expression level differences between GluR7 alleles expressed in the same brain. The expression level of the allelic GluR7 mRNAs differed in 27 samples from 1.2- to 12.7-fold. Unequal expression level of allelic mRNAs is characteristic for genes that are affected by genomic imprinting or that contain mutations. Genomic imprinting in most cases is conserved between human and mice. However, we did not detect unequal expression of allelic GluR7 mRNAs in mice. Our results are important for future studies that explore a potential role or roles for GluR7 receptors in the brain and for neurological disorders.

Key words: kainate receptor; GluR7; polymorphism; allele expression; genomic imprinting; RNA editing

Copyright © 2000 Society for Neuroscience  0270-6474/00/20249025-09$05.00/0




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