1.A.10.1.6
The heteromeric monovalent cation/Ca²⁺ channel/glutamate (NMDA) receptor NMDAR1/NMDAR2A/NMDAR2B/NMDAR2C) (Monyer et al., 1992). Note: NR2B is the same as NR3, GluN2A, GRIN2A or subunit epsilon (Schüler et al., 2008). Mediates voltage- and Mg²⁺-dependent control of Na⁺ and Ca²⁺ permeability (Yang et al., 2010).  Mutations in the subunit, GRIN1, a 1464 aa protein, identified in patients with early-onset epileptic encephalopathy and profound developmental delay, are located in the transmembrane domain and the linker region between the ligand-binding and transmembrane domains (Yuan et al. 2014; Ohba et al. 2015).  Karakas and Furukawa 2014 determined the crystal structure of the heterotetrameric GluN1-GluN2B NMDA receptor ion channel at 4 Å resolution. The receptor is arranged as a dimer of GluN1-GluN2B heterodimers with the twofold symmetry axis running through the entire molecule composed of an amino terminal domain, a ligand-binding domain, and a transmembrane domain.  The GluN2 subunit regulates synaptic trafficking of AMPA in the neonatal mouse brain (Hamada et al. 2014).  GRIN1 and GRIN2A mutations are associated with severe intellectual disability with cortical visual impairment, epilepsy and oculomotor and movement disorders being discriminating phenotypic features (Lemke et al. 2016; Chen et al. 2017).The cryoEM structure of a triheteromeric receptor including GluN1 (glycine binding), GluN2A and GluN2B (both glutamate binding) has been solved with and without a GluN2B allosteric antagonist, Ro 25-6981 (Lü et al. 2017). Ogden et al. 2017 implicated the pre-M1 region in gating, providing insight into how different subunits contribute to gating, and suggesting that mutations in the pre-M1 helix, such as those that cause epilepsy and developmental delays, can compromise neuronal health. The severity of GRIN2A (Glu2A)-related disorders can be predicted based on the positions of the mutations in the encoding gene (Strehlow et al. 2019). Knock-in mice expressing an ethanol-resistant GluN2A NMDA receptor subunit show altered responses to ethanol (Zamudio et al. 2019). Results of McDaniel et al. 2020 revealed the role of the pre-M1 helix in channel gating, implicated the surrounding amino acid environment in this mechanism, and suggested unique subunit-specific contributions of pre-M1 helices to GluN1 and GluN2 gating. The human ortholog is 998.5% identical. An autism-associated mutation in GluN2B prevents NMDA receptor trafficking and interferes with dendrite growth (Sceniak et al. 2019). The binding of calcium-calmodulin to the C-terminus of GluN1 has long range allosteric effects on the extracellular segments of the receptor that may contribute to the calcium-dependent inactivation (Bhatia et al. 2020). GluN1 interacts with PCDH7 (O60245) to regulate dendritic spine morphology and synaptic function (Wang et al. 2020).Pluripotential GluN1 (NMDA NR1) functions in cellular nuclei in pain/nociception (McNearney and Westlund 2023).