Tandem subunits effectively constrain GABAA receptor stoichiometry and recapitulate receptor kinetics but are insensitive to GABAA receptor-associated protein

Abstract

GABAergic synapses likely contain multiple GABAA receptor subtypes, making postsynaptic currents difficult to dissect. However, even in heterologous expression systems, analysis of receptors composed of α, β, and γ subunits can be confounded by receptors expressed from α and β subunits alone. To produce recombinant GABAA receptors containing fixed subunit stoichiometry, we coexpressed individual subunits with a "tandem" α1 subunit linked to a β2 subunit. Cotransfection of the γ2 subunit with αβ-tandem subunits in human embryonic kidney 293 cells produced currents that were similar in their macroscopic kinetics, single-channel amplitudes, and pharmacology to overexpression of the γ subunit with nonlinked α1 and β2 subunits. Similarly, expression of α subunits together with αβ-tandem subunits produced receptors having physiological and pharmacological characteristics that closely matched cotransfection of α with β subunits. In this first description of tandem GABAA subunits measured with patch-clamp and rapid agonist application techniques, we conclude that incorporation of αβ-tandem subunits can be used to fix stoichiometry and to establish the intrinsic kinetic properties of α1β2 and α1β2γ2 receptors. We used this method to test whether the accessory protein GABAA receptor-associated protein (GABARAP) alters GABAA receptor properties directly or influences subunit composition. In recombinant receptors with fixed stoichiometry, coexpression of GABARAP-enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) fusion protein had no effect on desensitization, deactivation, or diazepam potentiation of GABA-mediated currents. However, in α1β2γ2S transfections in which stoichiometry was not fixed, GABARAP-EGFP altered desensitization, deactivation, and diazepam potentiation of GABA-mediated currents. The data suggest that GABARAP does not alter receptor kinetics directly but by facilitating surface expression of αβγ receptors. Copyright © 2005 Society for Neuroscience.