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Two birds with one stone: a novel motif for ACh receptor assembly quality control
1Departments of Neurobiology, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294, USA. lmei@nrc.uab.edu
Trends in Neurosciences
|April 12, 2003
Abstract:
Assembly of ACh receptors is under tight quality control. Only functional ACh receptors are expressed on the cell surface; unassembled subunits are retained in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). In a recent elegant study, Wang and colleagues have identified a novel motif in the M1 domain of the ACh-receptor subunit that is responsible for ER retention and degradation of unassembled subunits. This signal appears to play an important role in regulating surface trafficking of functional ACh receptors.