Nerves typically communicate with muscles and other nerves through chemicals (neurotransmitters) that are released at the nerve tips and are sensed by cell surfaces that lie immediately adjacent to them. In the brain, however, neurotransmitters are sometimes released to a larger neighborhood of cells. This is often true of the neurotransmitter glutamate, the most abundant neurotransmitter in the central nervous system.

To understand the action of glutamate in neurotransmission and neural plasticity, it is essential to know how its concentration changes during the course of neural stimulation and afterwards. Hires et al (2008) devised a method of measuring glutamate in real time and found that at least with certain neurons, glutamate concentration rises and falls rapidly.

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Experiments
  • Construction of glutamate sensors
  • Initial testing of sensors in vitro
  • Optimization of sensor characteristics
  • Expression of sensor in living cells
  • Glutamate measurement in dendrites
  • Glutamate measurement in response to frequency of action potentials
• Implications
  • Glutamate function
  • Sensor design
• Support pages
  • Protein purification through His tags
  • Overexpression of protein using pRSETB
  • Directing proteins to a membrane by signal peptides
  • Transmembrane regions of proteins
  • Expression of proteins on the surface of mammalian cells through pDISPLAY