Evolutionary mode and functional divergence of vertebrate NMDA receptor subunit 2 genes.

<h4>Background</h4>Ionotropic glutamate receptors in the central nervous system play a major role in numerous brain functions including learning and memory in many vertebrate species. NR2 subunits have been regarded as rate-limiting molecules in controlling the optimal N-methyl-D-asparta...

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Autores principales: Huajing Teng, Wanshi Cai, LingLin Zhou, Jing Zhang, Qi Liu, Yongqing Wang, Wei Dai, Mei Zhao, Zhongsheng Sun
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2010
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Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/ca4fd3ccf41d47268b58071897469b36
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Sumario:<h4>Background</h4>Ionotropic glutamate receptors in the central nervous system play a major role in numerous brain functions including learning and memory in many vertebrate species. NR2 subunits have been regarded as rate-limiting molecules in controlling the optimal N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor's coincidence-detection property and subsequent learning and memory function across multi-species. However, its evolutionary mode among vertebrate species remains unclear.<h4>Results</h4>With extensive analysis of phylogeny, exon structure, protein domain, paralogon and synteny, we demonstrated that two-round genome duplication generated quartet GRIN2 genes and the third-round fish-specific genome duplication generated extra copies of fish GRIN2 genes. In addition, in-depth investigation has enabled the identification of three novel genes, GRIN2C_Gg, GRIN2D-1_Ol and GRIN2D-2_Tr in the chicken, medaka and fugu genome, respectively. Furthermore, we showed functional divergence of NR2 genes mostly occurred at the first-round duplication, amino acid residues located at the N-terminal Lig_chan domain were responsible for type I functional divergence between these GRIN2 subfamilies and purifying selection has been the prominent natural pressure operating on these diversified GRIN2 genes.<h4>Conclusion and significance</h4>These findings provide intriguing subjects for testing the 2R and 3R hypothesis and we expect it could provide new insights into the underlying evolution mechanisms of cognition in vertebrate.