An assembly of four or five subunits which form a structure with an extracellular N-terminus and a large loop that together form the ligand binding domain. The C-terminus is intracellular. The ionotropic glutamate receptor complex itself acts as a ligand gated ion channel; on binding glutamate, charged ions pass through a channel in the center of the receptor complex. Kainate receptors are multimeric assemblies of GluK1-3 (also called GluR5-7), GluK4 (KA1) and GluK5 (KA2) subunits.
kainate selective glutamate receptor complex