Function
The serotonin transporter removes serotonin from the synaptic cleft back into the synaptic boutons. Thus, it terminates the effects of serotonin and simultaneously enables its reuse by the presynaptic neuron.
Neurons communicate by using chemical messages like serotonin between cells. The transporter protein, by recycling serotonin, regulates its concentration in a gap, or synapse, and thus its effects on a receiving neuron’s receptors.
Medical studies have shown that changes in serotonin transporter metabolism appear to be associated with many different phenomena, including alcoholism, clinical depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), romantic love, hypertension and generalized social phobia.
The serotonin transporter is also present in platelets; there, serotonin functions as a vasoconstrictive substance.
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Serotonin
Read more about this topic: Serotonin Transporter
Famous quotes containing the word function:
“The function of the actor is to make the audience imagine for the moment that real things are happening to real people.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Every boy was supposed to come into the world equipped with a father whose prime function was to be our father and show us how to be men. He can escape us, but we can never escape him. Present or absent, dead or alive, real or imagined, our father is the main man in our masculinity.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“Morality and its victim, the mother—what a terrible picture! Is there indeed anything more terrible, more criminal, than our glorified sacred function of motherhood?”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)