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Abstract
Throughout the central nervous system (CNS), a family of ligand-gated ion channels known as α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid receptors (AMPARs) translate chemical signals to electrical impulses. While structural mechanisms of receptor gating and kinetics have been proposed through decades of recombinant investigations, these studies are limited to the use of engineered receptor/auxiliary protein complexes, which have difficulty replicating the in vivo assembly and architecture of AMPARs. This absence of structural information prevents not only a bona fide understanding of these receptor complexes, but also an accurate blueprint from which to study their kinetics and physiology. Collectively, this dissertation defines an in vivo structural landscape of AMPARs with region-specificity.