NMDARs have been implicated in numerous cellular processes and psychiatric disorders. Studying behavioral effects of NMDAR antagonism in humans has led to the hypothesis that glutamatergic synapse dysfunction may be the root cause of schizophrenia (Belsham, 2001 and Moghaddam, 2003). In addition, suppression of NMDAR function during development recapitulates schizophrenia-like symptoms in adult mice (Stefani and Moghaddam, 2005). Supporting a hypoglutamate hypothesis of schizophrenia, mice with suppressed NMDAR function have been generated as effective animal models of this disorder (Mohn et al., 1999 and Belforte et al., 2010).

One of these, the GluN1 hypomorph mouse, exhibits a phenotype that Dasatinib cell line includes hyperlocomotion and altered sociability. Because of the lethality associated with the GluN2B global knockout mouse, the role of GluN2B in the expression of this behavioral phenotype had not been tested. GluN1 hypomorph animals exhibit a reduction in total NMDAR expression to approximately 5%–10%. In contrast, in 2B→2A homozygous animals, approximately 60% of the integrated cortical NMDAR current is recovered,

but it is now mediated purely by GluN2A-contaning NMDARs. Interestingly, this manipulation recapitulates a behavioral phenotype of hyperlocomotion and altered Ipatasertib research buy sociability. This predicts that aspects of the behavioral phenotype associated with suppressed NMDAR dysfunction in the GluN1 hypomorph may be specifically due to a loss of GluN2B-containing NMDAR signaling during Tryptophan synthase development. We also show that developmental excision of GluN2B in primary cortical and hippocampal neurons (2BΔCtx) recapitulates aspects of the phenotype observed in the 2B→2A animal. It has previously

been shown that suppression of NMDAR function in cortical and hippocampal GABAergic interneurons results in schizophrenia-like symptoms in mice (Belforte et al., 2010). Although future experiments are needed to compare and contrast the phenotypes of these animals, data suggest that changes in corticolimbic excitatory and inhibitory balance may underlie these behavioral alterations. In summary, our experiments show that GluN2B is a critical regulator of homeostatic synaptic plasticity and social behavior. They demonstrate that GluN2A, in spite of being functionally expressed in the absence of GluN2B at cortical synapses, is unable to rescue GluN2B loss of function. We infer that a major function of GluN2B-containing NMDARs is to suppress local protein translation in dendrites through interaction with downstream signaling molecules, including alpha-CaMKII and the mTOR pathway.