Acetylcholine and GABA Receptors: Subunits of Central and Peripheral Receptors and Their Encoding Nucleic Acids
- E.A. Barnard*,
- D. Beeson*,†,
- G. Bilbe*,†,
- D.A. Brown‡,
- A. Constanti‡,
- B.M. Conti-Tronconi§,
- J.O. Dolly*,
- S.M.J. Dunn*,§,
- F. Mehraban*,
- B.M. Richards†, and
- T.G. Smart‡
- *Department of Biochemistry, Imperial College of Science and Technology, London SW7 2AZ, England; †Searle Research and Development, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire HP12 4HL, England; ‡Department of Pharmacology, The School of Pharmacy, University of London, London WC1N 1AX, England; §Church Laboratory of Chemical Biology, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
Excerpt
Insights at the molecular level into the complex proteins that constitute the receptors for neurotransmitters and hormones—which should be securely based on an intimate knowledge of their architecture—have hitherto been severely limited, although they have been attained in the cases of many enzymes. An understanding in depth of receptor function has been elusive because of a number of special and major difficulties inherent in the nature and role of these systems:
-
These receptors in nearly every case are present in extremely minute amounts, which may reach down to the level of only a few molecules per active cell.
-
The receptors under consideration here are embedded in the cell membrane, and hence can only be extracted and studied in isolation by replacing the natural lipid environment with a detergent envelope; this frustrates many types of investigations.
-
In many cases, the last-named factor has impeded a purification of the receptor, if the
...
