Glutamate (neurotransmitter)
In neuroscience, glutamate refers to the anion of glutamic acid in its role as a neurotransmitter: a chemical that nerve cells use to send signals to other cells. It is by a wide margin the most abundant excitatory neurotransmitter in the vertebrate nervous system. It is used by every major excitatory function in the vertebrate brain, accounting in total for well over 90% of the synaptic connections in the human brain. It also serves as the primary neurotransmitter for some localized brain regions, such as cerebellum granule cells.
Glutamate carboxypeptidase II
Glutamate is the “primary excitatory neurotransmitter in the human nervous system”, participating in a multitude of brain functions. Over-stimulation and -activation of glutamate receptors as well as “disturbances in the cellular mechanisms that protect against the adverse consequences of physiological glutamate receptor activation” have been known to cause neuron damage and death, which have been associated with multiple neurological diseases.