title: Mutational analysis of glutamate transporters.
abstract: Glutamate transporters are a family of transporters that regulate extracellular glutamate concentrations so as to maintain a dynamic and high-fidelity cell signalling process in the brain. Site-directed mutagenesis has been used to investigate various aspects of the structural and functional properties of these transporters to gain insights into how they work. This field of research has recently undergone a major development with the determination of the crystal structure of a bacterial glutamate transporter, and this chapter relates the results from mutagenesis experiments with what we now know about glutamate transporter structure.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmacology, Institute for Biomedical Research, University of Sydney, 2006 New South Wales, Australia. robv@med.usyd.edu.au
authors.forename: R J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Vandenberg
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D018118:Chloride Channels / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D002712:Chlorides / Q000378:metabolism; D003460:Crystallization; D050491:Glutamate Plasma Membrane Transport Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D018698:Glutamic Acid / Q000378:metabolism; D006801:Humans; D015640:Ion Channel Gating; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D016297:Mutagenesis, Site-Directed; D011487:Protein Conformation; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D013329:Structure-Activity Relationship
chemical_list: D001426:Bacterial Proteins; D018118:Chloride Channels; D002712:Chlorides; D050491:Glutamate Plasma Membrane Transport Proteins; D018698:Glutamic Acid