Use of murine mutants to study glycine receptor function

1. The accompanying articles in this symposium describe several different approaches used to examine the function of glycine and GABA receptors, including pharmacology and neurochemistry, permeability and agonist-binding approaches, the use of mutated recombinant receptors and monoclonal antibody staining to examine receptor distribution on neurons. 2. The present review focuses on the use of another, quite different, approach: the use of murine mutants, spasmodic and spastic, to study the function of native glycine receptors at synaptic connections within the central nervous system.