Immunological detection of glutamate receptor subtypes in human central nervous system.

Glutamate receptors are the principal excitatory neurotransmitter receptors in the central nervous system and are involved in a number of normal and pathological neuronal processes. Using subunit-specific antipeptide antibodies developed against the predicted amino acid sequences of several rat glutamate receptor cDNAs, we have identified these proteins in post-mortem human central nervous system tissue. Immunoblotting of dissected brain regions demonstrates that these receptor proteins are differentially distributed. The ability to identify these proteins in post-mortem human tissues should allow examination of the changes in levels of receptor subtypes that occur in a variety of neurological and psychiatric diseases.