A salt or ester of glutamic acid

Usage examples of glutamate.

Monica is allergic to monosodium glutamate, the taste-improver professional cooks use so that they can serve appetizing leftovers.

It was soon apparent that the vital molecule was the transmitter amino acid, glutamate, well known as one of the commonest of the excitatory neurotransmitters of the brain and present in high concentration within neurons.

Like all transmitters, glutamate is released from a presynaptic terminal when the nerve axon running to that terminal fires.

Annette Dolphin, working with Tim Bliss, showed that, when the perforant pathway is stimulated in vivo, there is an increased release of glutamate in the hippocampus, and the biochemical mechanisms of this release were mapped in some detail by Marina Lynch.

The glutamate is released from the presynaptic side of the synapse between the incoming perforant nerve and the hippocampal neuron.

On this basis, Lynch and Bliss were to argue, rather as Kandel had done earlier for serotonin in Aplysia, that it was presynaptic plasticity that was important for the initiation of LTP, and the postsynaptic cell was simply doing what it had to as a result of the increase in the strength of the glutamate signal it was receiving.

Thus although each receptor type responds to glutamate, some will respond to chemically similar molecules as well, others show different forms of specificity.

One class of glutamate receptor is known as the NMDA receptor, because the effects of glutamate can be mimicked by injection of the chemically similar substance N-methyl-D-aspartic acid.

Drugs which interact with the other types of glutamate receptor are without effect.

More NMDA sites would mean a postsynaptic cell more responsive to glutamate and hence more likely to fire.

Burchuladze, R and Rose, S P R Memory formation in day-old chicks requires NMDA but not non-NMDA glutamate receptors, in press, 1992.

What with our stopping for barely edible fast-food chicken-absolutely rife with monosodium glutamate, sodium nitrate, and God knows what other poisons-we arrived at the Sea and Sand Motel on the southern outskirts of Oceanside.

All readings looked fine: glutamate, serotonin, do-pamine, cortical suppressant, amygdala regulator, P15, BDNF to strengthen the synaptic connections for learning in the hippocampus.

Maus abhorred tea bags, pressure cookers, canned fruit cocktail, bottled mayonnaise, instant coffee, iceberg lettuce, monosodium glutamate, eggs poached in geometric shapes, New England boiled dinners, and anything resembling a smorgasbord, salad bar, or all-you-can-eat buffet.

Worcestershire sauce, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, monosodium glutamate, nonfat dry milk, dehydrated onions, flavoring, sugar, caramel color, spice, cysteine and thiamine hydrochloride, gum arabic.