PHAR 562 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Parallel Fiber, Sensory Deprivation, Cannabinoid
14 Oct 2017
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Ionotropic glutamate receptors and their synapses iii: the dynamic synapse. Deactivation: when you activate a receptor, the agonist is taken away before the channel has a chance to desensitize. The decay in the response reflects the rate of channel closure (ie. the rate of a door takes to close). If you give an agonist pulse for longer, then agonist can bind, unbind, and rebind again within the 10s of msec, this causes conformational change in protein structure where it becomes insensitive to another application of agonist. In your brain, because it is generally thought that neurotransmitter only hands around for a short period time, synaptic transmission is really reflecting channel closure. For some synapses you actually get accumulation of neurotransmitter and desensitization seems more appropriate. Depending on the geometry of synapse, you can change the physiological properties of ion channel. If everything is hardwired, this would have never happened.
