Glutamate receptors at atomic resolution

At synapses throughout the brain and spinal cord, the amino-acid glutamate is the major excitatory neurotransmitter. During evolution, a family of glutamate-receptor ion channels seems to have been assembled from a kit consisting of discrete ligand-binding, ion-channel, modulatory and cytoplasmic domains. Crystallographic studies that exploit this unique architecture have greatly aided structural analysis of the ligand-binding core, but the results also pose a formidable challenge, namely that of resolving the allosteric mechanisms by which individual domains communicate and function in an intact receptor.