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Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Altering the Relative Abundance of GABAA Receptor Subunits Changes GABA- and Ethanol-Responses in Xenopus Oocytes
Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research Volume 33 Issue 6, Pages 1089 - 1096

Variations in GABRA2 and GABRG3, genes encoding the α2 and γ3 subunits of the pentameric GABAA receptor, are associated with the risk of developing alcoholism in adults, conduct disorder at younger ages, and with differences in electroencephalographic power in the β frequency range. The SNPs associated with alcoholism did not alter the coding of these genes, and extensive DNA sequencing of GABRA2 did not find coding changes in the high-risk haplotypes. Therefore, we hypothesize that the associations arise from differences in gene expression.

These studies demonstrate that changes in relative expression of GABAA receptor subunits alter the response of the resulting channels to GABA and to ethanol.


Request Reprint E-Mail: johurley@iupui.edu

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