Featured Alumna
"I came away from my graduate training with the view that science
is full of surprises and that there are always new ways of
looking at a a question. UCSD was a great place to start from
...it has made a huge difference in how things have turned out."
Susan G. Amara
Ph.D., 1983
Detre Professor and Chair,
Department of Neurobiology
University of Pittsburgh
Dr. Amara is an internationally recognized scholar and a leader
in understanding the functions of neurotransmitter transporters in biology and disease.
Among her many professional honors, Dr. Amara was elected to the National Academy
of Sciences in 2004 in recognition of the importance of her work and of her leadership
in this field.
Key Publications:
Seal R.P., Leighton, B.H. and Amara, S.G. A model for the topology of glutamate transporters determined by extracellular accessibility of substituted cysteines. (2000) Neuron 25: 695-706.
Seal, R.P., Shigeri, Y., Eliasof, S., Leighton, B.H., and Amara, S.G. Sulfhydryl modification of V449C in the glutamate transporter EAAT1 abolishes substrate transport but not the substrate-gated anion conductance. (2001) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98: 15324-15329.
Ingram, S.L., Prasad, B.M. and Amara, S.G. Dopamine transporter-mediated conductances increase excitability of midbrain dopamine neurons. (2003) Nature Neuroscience 5: 971-978.
20 issued patents
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