The non-NMDA receptors: types, protein structure and molecular biology.

In this article in the TiPS series on the pharmacology of excitatory amino acids Eric Barnard and Jeremy Henley report on the very recent advances in protein purification and molecular biology of their receptors. Although the NMDA receptor, which is the best characterized of these pharmacologically, has not yet yielded to recombinant DNA technology, several different clones encoding subunits of non-NMDA excitatory amino acid receptors have been reported. From the properties of these and of a purified non-NMDA receptor, and the pharmacology of the native responses to AMPA and kainate, the authors conclude that multiple non-NMDA subtypes exist and that one of these is a unitary receptor that can respond to both kainate and AMPA.