title: Computational Studies of Glutamate Transporters.
abstract: Glutamate is the major excitatory neurotransmitter in the human brain whose binding to receptors on neurons excites them while excess glutamate are removed from synapses via transporter proteins. Determination of the crystal structures of bacterial aspartate transporters has paved the way for computational investigation of their function and dynamics at the molecular level. Here, we review molecular dynamics and free energy calculation methods used in these computational studies and discuss the recent applications to glutamate transporters. The focus of the review is on the insights gained on the transport mechanism through computational methods, which otherwise is not directly accessible by experimental probes. Recent efforts to model the mammalian glutamate and other amino acid transporters, whose crystal structures have not been solved yet, are included in the review.
authors.affiliation: School of Physics, University of Sydney, New South Wales, Sydney 2006, Australia. setiadi@physics.usyd.edu.au.
authors.forename: Jeffry
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Setiadi
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Fisica, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianopolis 88040-900, Santa Catarina, Brazil. germanohei@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Germano
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Heinzelmann
authors.affiliation: School of Physics, University of Sydney, New South Wales, Sydney 2006, Australia. serdar@physics.usyd.edu.au.
authors.forename: Serdar
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kuyucak
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D050491:Glutamate Plasma Membrane Transport Proteins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism; D006801:Humans; D056004:Molecular Dynamics Simulation; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data
chemical_list: D050491:Glutamate Plasma Membrane Transport Proteins
keywords: computational; glutamate; molecular dynamics; transporters