Glutamate is a major constituent of a wide variety of proteins; consequently it is one of the most abundant amino acids in the human body. Glutamate is formally classified as a non-essential amino acid, because it can be

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Glutamate exerts its effects by binding to and activating cell surface receptors. In mammals, four families of glutamate receptors have been identified, known as AMPA receptors

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Glutamate transporters, EAAT and VGLUT, are found in neuronal and glial membranes. They rapidly remove glutamate from the extracellularspace. In brain injury or disease, they often work in

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The presence of glutamate in every part of the body as a building-block for protein made its special role in the nervous system difficult to recognize: its function as a neurotransmitter was not generally accepted until the 1970s, decades after the identification of

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Glutamate functions as a neurotransmitter in every type of animal that has a nervous system, including ctenophores(comb jellies), which branched off from other phyla at an early stage in evolution and lack the other neurotransmitters found ubiquitously among

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