Engineering light-gated glutamate receptors

Engineering light-gated ion channels.

Ion channels are gated by a variety of stimuli, including ligands, voltage, membrane tension, temperature, and even light. Natural gates can be altered and augmented using synthetic chemistry and molecular biology to develop channels with completely new functional properties. Light-sensitive channels are particularly attractive because optical manipulation offers a high degree of spatial and te...

Glutamate gated spiking Neuron Model

BACKGROUND Biological neuron models mainly analyze the behavior of neural networks. Neurons are described in terms of firing rates viz an analog signal. PURPOSE The Izhikevich neuron model is an efficient, powerful model of spiking neuron. This model is a reduction of Hodgkin-Huxley model to a two variable system and is capable of producing rich firing patterns for many biological neurons. ...

Synaptic neurotransmitter-gated receptors.

Since the discovery of the major excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters and their receptors in the brain, many have deliberated over their likely structures and how these may relate to function. This was initially satisfied by the determination of the first amino acid sequences of the Cys-loop receptors that recognized acetylcholine, serotonin, GABA, and glycine, followed later by similar ...

Ionotropic Glutamate Receptors and their Role in Neurological Diseases

Glutamate is extensively and relatively uniformly distributed in the central nervous system (CNS) and its effects mediated by two distinct groups of receptors including Ionotropic and metabotropic glutamate receptors. Concentration of glutamate in the nervous system is much higher than in other tissues. Glutamate receptors play an important role in synaptic transmission, neural plasticity and n...

Ca(2+) conduction by an amino acid-gated ion channel related to glutamate receptors.