TY - JOUR T1 - A Portable Site: A Binding Element for 17β-Estradiol Can Be Placed on Any Subunit of a Nicotinic α4β2 Receptor JF - The Journal of Neuroscience JO - J. Neurosci. SP - 5045 LP - 5054 DO - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4802-10.2011 VL - 31 IS - 13 AU - Xiaochun Jin AU - Joe Henry Steinbach Y1 - 2011/03/30 UR - http://www.jneurosci.org/content/31/13/5045.abstract N2 - Endogenous steroids can modulate the activity of transmitter-gated channels by directly interacting with the receptor. 17β-Estradiol potentiates activation of neuronal nicotinic α4β2 receptors by interacting with a 4 aa sequence at the extreme C terminus of the α4 subunit, but it is not known whether potentiation requires that the sequence be placed on a specific subunit (e.g., an α4 subunit that is involved in forming an acetylcholine-binding site). By using concatemers of subunits and chimeric subunits, we have found that the C-terminal domain can be moved from the α4 to the β2 subunit and still result in potentiation. In addition, the sequence can be placed on a subunit that contributes to an acetylcholine-binding site or on the structural subunit. The data indicate that this estradiol-binding element is a discrete sequence and suggest that the effect of 17β-estradiol is mediated by actions on single subunits and that the overall consequences for gating occur because of the summation of independent energetic contributions to overall gating of this receptor. ER -