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Updated: Jul 24, 2026
Single Synapse Indicators of Glutamate Release and Uptake in Acute Brain Slices from Normal and Huntington Mice
Published on: March 11, 2020
Quantitative analysis of glutamate transporter mRNA expression in prefrontal and primary visual cortex in normal and
T L Lauriat1, S Dracheva, B Chin
1Department of Psychiatry, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, One Gustave L. Levy Place, Box 1229, New York, NY 10029, USA.
Abstract:
Abnormalities of the glutamatergic system in schizophrenia have been identified in numerous studies, but little is known about the role of glutamate transporters and their messenger RNA (mRNA) expression. In addition, the abundances of the two major isoforms of human excitatory amino acid transporter 2 (EAAT2) or its rat ortholog, glutamate transporter 1, have never been compared in a quantitative manner. Using quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction, we established that the expression of the EAAT1, EAAT2a, EAAT2b, and EAAT3 transcripts was not different in the dorsolateral prefrontal and primary visual cortices of persons with schizophrenia relative to matched controls. EAAT2a expression was about 25-fold and 10-fold higher than EAAT2b in human and rat brain, respectively. The data provided no evidence of an effect of antipsychotic medications on the mRNA expression of the glutamate transporters. However, because most of the schizophrenic subjects in the cohort had been treated with antipsychotics for many years, it is still possible that changes in transporter expression were masked by medication effects.
