Biomolecules 2015, 5(4), 3067-3086; doi:10.3390/biom5043067
Computational Studies of Glutamate Transporters
1
School of Physics, University of Sydney, New South Wales, Sydney 2006, Australia
2
Departamento de Fisica, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianopolis 88040-900, Santa Catarina, Brazil
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Kenneth E. Miller
Received: 25 September 2015 / Revised: 29 October 2015 / Accepted: 3 November 2015 / Published: 11 November 2015
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Role and Regulation of Glutamate Metabolism)
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. View Full-TextKeywords:
glutamate; transporters; computational; molecular dynamics
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. (CC BY 4.0).
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MDPI and ACS Style
Setiadi, J.; Heinzelmann, G.; Kuyucak, S. Computational Studies of Glutamate Transporters. Biomolecules 2015, 5, 3067-3086.
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