Adenosine receptor neurobiology: overview.

Adenosine is a naturally occurring nucleoside that is distributed ubiquitously throughout the body as a metabolic intermediary. In the brain, adenosine functions as an important upstream neuromodulator of a broad spectrum of neurotransmitters, receptors, and signaling pathways. By acting through four G-protein-coupled receptors, adenosine contributes critically to homeostasis and neuromodulatory control of a variety of normal and abnormal brain functions, ranging from synaptic plasticity, to cognition, to sleep, to motor activity to neuroinflammation, and cell death. This review begun with an overview of the gene and genome structure and the expression pattern of adenosine receptors (ARs). We feature several new developments over the past decade in our understanding of AR functions in the brain, with special focus on the identification and characterization of canonical and noncanonical signaling pathways of ARs. We provide an update on functional insights from complementary genetic-knockout and pharmacological studies on the AR control of various brain functions. We also highlight several novel and recent developments of AR neurobiology, including (i) recent breakthrough in high resolution of three-dimension structure of adenosine A2A receptors (A2ARs) in several functional status, (ii) receptor-receptor heterodimerization, (iii) AR function in glial cells, and (iv) the druggability of AR. We concluded the review with the contention that these new developments extend and strengthen the support for A1 and A2ARs in brain as therapeutic targets for neurologic and psychiatric diseases.