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Updated: Aug 26, 2026

A High-content Assay for Monitoring AMPA Receptor Trafficking
Published on: January 28, 2019
Mechanisms of synaptic plasticity: from membrane to intracellular AMPAR trafficking
1Department of Pharmacology, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, VA 22908, USA. jjzhu@virginia.edu
Abstract:
Brief periods of repetitive neural firing onto adjacent neurons can lead to changes in synaptic plasticity, that is, changes in the make-up of macromolecular complexes located at synapses. This process includes the regulated trafficking of alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid receptors (AMPARs) to synaptic membranes. Little is known, however, about how the AMPARs are regulated before they are shuttled to the membrane. Greger et al. have found that the length of the cytoplasmic tails of constituent subunits of a given AMPAR is determined by editing [at a glutamine (Q) or an arginine (R) codon] near their C termini. Tail length, in turn, dictates whether AMPARs will be retained or quickly released from the endoplasmic reticulum.
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