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The Glutamate And Chloride Permeation Pathways Are Colocalized In Individual Neuronal Glutamate Transporter Subunits, Gregory Patrick Leary, Emily F. Stone, David Charles Holley, Michael Kavanaugh

Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences Faculty Publications

Glutamate transporters have a homotrimeric subunit structure with a large central water-filled cavity that extends partially into the plane of the lipid bilayer (Yernool et al., 2004). In addition to uptake of glutamate, the transporters also mediate a chloride conductance that is increased in the presence of substrate. Whether the chloride channel is located in the central pore of the trimer or within the individual subunits has been controversial. We find that coexpression of wild-type neuronal glutamate transporter EAAT3 subunits with subunits mutated at R447, a residue governing substrate selectivity (Bendahan et al., 2000), results in …