Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid A Receptor Alpha 2 (gABRa2)

GABA is the major inhibitory neurotransmitter in the mammalian brain where it acts at GABA-A receptors, which are ligand-gated chloride channels. Chloride conductance of these channels can be modulated by agents such as benzodiazepines that bind to the GABA-A receptor. At least 16 distinct subunits of GABA-A receptors have been identified. Alternatively spliced transcript variants encoding the same protein have been found for this gene.the human GABA-A receptor alpha-2 subunit gene using a bovine alpha-2 subunit cDNA as a probe to screen a fetal brain cDNA library. Both human and rat alpha-2 transcripts contain a (CT)34 dinucleotide repeat in the 5-prime untranslated region. The human GABRA2 predicted 451-amino acid protein is 98% identical to that of the bovine alpha-2 subunit.