The organization of the gene for the functionally dominant alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methylisoxazole-4-propionic acid receptor subunit GluR-B

The murine gene encoding the GluR-B subunit of alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methylisoxazole-4-propionic acid receptors was characterized with respect to exon-intron organization, transcriptional start site, alternatively spliced transcripts, and adenosine to guanosine substitutions between gene and complementary DNA sequence. The GluR-B gene spans > 90 kilobase pairs and harbors 17 exons. Transcription appears to initiate approximately 430 nucleotides upstream of the translational start codon, with no intron in the 5'-untranslated region of the gene. Four alternatively spliced mRNAs are generated from the primary GluR-B transcript, two containing the modules Flip and Flop, and another two with alternate C-terminal coding sequence. The major GluR-B mRNAs in murine brain, 4 and 6 kilobase differ in the length of their 3'-untranslated region.