GO:0032983

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 GluR5-7 and KA-1/2 subunits. [http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/Synaptic/info/glutamate.html]