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. 2011 Jun 30;7(6):e1002106. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002106

Figure 4. Slower kinetics and increased receptor flickering prolong NR2B activation.

Figure 4

The activation events for all NMDARs were analyzed to discern differences in the temporal activation patterns among subtypes. (A) NR2B-NMDARs reach peak activation significantly slower than NR2A-NMDARs and NR2A/NR2B-NMDARs (* p<0.05 NR2B vs NR2A and NR2B vs NR2A/NR2B). (B) Receptor “flickering”, defined by the ability for a receptor to have multiple activation events without glutamate unbinding was analyzed using cumulative distributions to (C) demonstrate that NR2A-NMDARs (red) have significantly longer durations of individual events compared to NR2B-NMDARs (blue), triheteromeric NMDARs (black) and AMPARs (green) (KS test - p<0.01). (D) However, NR2B-NMDARs have significantly more distinct events per binding compared to other subtypes (KS test - p<0.01).