NEUR 3204 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Barbiturate, Bicuculline, Brain Ischemia
Document Summary
Glutamate is an excitatory amino acid neurotransmitter. All neurons and glial cells contain glutamate: may not make glutamate, but contain . Glutamatergic neurons use glutamate as the transmitter, and have large concentration of glutamate. Glutamate is synthesized from glutamine by glutaminase: this process requires energy (atp) Three different vesicular glutamate transporters move glutamate into synaptic vesicles: Vglut1, vglut2, vglut3: make and package glutamate, primed for release, need vesicle to transport glu outside neuron, fuse to presynaptic terminal and be available. Eaat - excitatory amino acid transporter: taken up by eaat, synthesized into glutamine again cyclic. The vglut transporters are found only in glutamatergic neurons and are thus good markers. Distribution of these transporters has been mapped in the rat brain: differential expression in different parts of the brain, dictate differential function, vglut"s may have different function, learning/memory (hippocampus) vglut3 may be important. Vglut1 knockout mice survive birth but usually die during the third week of life.