Department of Neurology, University of Ulm, Albert-Einstein-Allee 11, 89081, Ulm, Germany.
We cloned four novel transcripts of the excitatory amino acid transporter 2, named EAAT2/3UT1-4, resulting from differential cleavage and polyadenylation. Tandem poly (A) sites were found to be functional at 72, 654, 973 nucleotides and more than 2 kb downstream of the stop codon. A tissue-specific expression was identified for 3'-variants of the EAAT2 RNA, most prominently for EAAT2/3UT4 (hippocampus>cortex>>cerebellum>thalamus) as demonstrated by Northern blot analysis and quantitative PCR. We conclude, that alternative poly (A) selection may contribute to the reported differential EAAT2 protein expression under normal and diseased conditions.