Download MendeleyStructural basis of dynamic glycine receptor clustering by gephyrin
Sola, M., Bavro, V.N., Timmins, J., Franz, T., Ricard-Blum, S., Schoehn, G., Ruigrok, R.W.H., Paarmann, I., Saiyed, T., O'Sullivan, G.A., Schmitt, B., Betz, H., Weissenhorn, W.(2004) EMBO J 23: 2510-2519
- PubMed: 15201864
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.emboj.7600256
- Primary Citation of Related Structures:
1T3E - PubMed Abstract:
Gephyrin is a bi-functional modular protein involved in molybdenum cofactor biosynthesis and in postsynaptic clustering of inhibitory glycine receptors (GlyRs). Here, we show that full-length gephyrin is a trimer and that its proteolysis in vitro causes the spontaneous dimerization of its C-terminal region (gephyrin-E), which binds a GlyR beta-subunit-derived peptide with high and low affinity. The crystal structure of the tetra-domain gephyrin-E in complex with the beta-peptide bound to domain IV indicates how membrane-embedded GlyRs may interact with subsynaptic gephyrin. In vitro, trimeric full-length gephyrin forms a network upon lowering the pH, and this process can be reversed to produce stable full-length dimeric gephyrin. Our data suggest a mechanism by which induced conformational transitions of trimeric gephyrin may generate a reversible postsynaptic scaffold for GlyR recruitment, which allows for dynamic receptor movement in and out of postsynaptic GlyR clusters, and thus for synaptic plasticity.
Organizational Affiliation:
European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Grenoble, France.
