Functional rescue of the inactive splice variant of the dopamine D3 receptor D3nf

We previously found that the dopamine D3 receptor can be split at the third cytoplasmic loop into two fragments (D3trunk and D3tail), and that the mixture of the two fragments retains the binding and functional activity of the wild type receptor. The dopamine D3 receptor gene gives rise to several inactive receptor splice variants, one of which is the D3nf. Since this gene variant very closely resembles our D3trunk fragment, in this study we investigated if the transfection of D3nf with D3tail could result in the rescue of a functional dopamine receptor. Our experiments showed that D3tail can indeed rescue the activity of D3nf, and that the pharmacological profile of this split D3nf/D3tail receptor is identical to that of the wild type D3 receptor.