Ion channels known as AMPA receptors help to transmit fast excitatory nerve impulses in the brain. Changes to their properties, which are regulated by other proteins, are crucial to many processes, including some involved in learning and memory.
TARP proteins were thought to be the only candidates for AMPA-receptor regulation. Yet in the rat brain such proteins associate with only about 30% of AMPA receptors.
Bernd Fakler and Nikolaj Klöcker at the University of Freiburg in Germany and their colleagues have unexpectedly come across what turns out to be the predominant partner proteins, using a quantitative proteomics approach. They found that, in rat brains, about 70% of AMPA receptors associate with cornichon proteins. Cornichons and TARPs regulate the function and expression of AMPA receptors differently, potentially allowing fine-tuning of fast nerve-impulse transmission.
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Neurobiology: Second fiddle. Nature 458, 129 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/458129b
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/458129b
