Determinants of the Anesthetic Sensitivity of Neuronal Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptors

• Published in: The Journal of biological chemistry Vol. 277; no. 12; pp. 10367 - 10373
• Main Authors: Downie, David Lindsay, Vicente-Agullo, Francisco, Campos-Caro, Antonio, Bushell, Trevor John, Lieb, William Robert, Franks, Nicholas Peter
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Inc 22.03.2002; American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
• Subjects: Acetylcholine - pharmacology; Anesthetics, Inhalation - pharmacology; Animals; Dose-Response Relationship, Drug; Female; Halothane - pharmacology; Mutagenesis, Site-Directed; Mutation; Neurons - drug effects; Neurons - metabolism; Oocytes - metabolism; Protein Binding; Protein Structure, Tertiary; Receptors, Nicotinic - metabolism; Recombinant Fusion Proteins - metabolism; Time Factors; Xenopus; Xenopus laevis
• ISSN: 0021-9258; 1083-351X
• DOI: 10.1074/jbc.M107847200

Some neurotransmitter-gated ion channels are very much more sensitive to general anesthetics than others, even when they are genetically and structurally related. The most striking example of this is the extreme sensitivity of heteromeric neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptors to inhalational general anesthetics compared with the marked insensitivity of the closely related homomeric neuronal nicotinic receptors. Here we investigate the role of the α subunit in determining the anesthetic sensitivity of these receptors by using α3/α7 chimeric subunits that are able to form functional homomeric receptors. By comparing the sensitivities of a number of chimeras to the inhalational agent halothane we show that the short (13 amino acids) putative extracellular loop connecting the second and third transmembrane segments is a critical determinant of anesthetic sensitivity. In addition, using site-directed mutagenesis, we show that two particular amino acids in this loop play a dominant role. When mutations are made in this loop, there is a good correlation between increasing anesthetic sensitivity and decreasing acetylcholine sensitivity. We conclude that this extracellular loop probably does not participate directly in anesthetic binding, but rather determines receptor sensitivity indirectly by playing a critical role in transducing anesthetic binding into an effect on channel gating.