Studies on the mechanism of general anesthesia

• Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 117; no. 24; pp. 13757 - 13766
• Main Authors: Pavel, Mahmud Arif, Petersen, E. Nicholas, Wang, Hao, Lerner, Richard A., Hansen, Scott B.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States National Academy of Sciences 16.06.2020
• Series: From the Cover
• Subjects: Anesthesia; Anesthetics; Biological Sciences; Cell membranes; Chloroform; Diethyl ether; Hydrophobicity; Ion channels; Isoflurane; Lipid rafts; Lipids; Localization; Phosphatidic acid; Phospholipase; Phospholipase D2; Propofol; Rafts; Xenon; phospholipase D; potassium channel; lipid raft; consciousness; substrate presentation

Inhaled anesthetics are a chemically diverse collection of hydrophobic molecules that robustly activate TWIK-related K⁺ channels (TREK-1) and reversibly induce loss of consciousness. For 100 y, anesthetics were speculated to target cellular membranes, yet no plausible mechanism emerged to explain a...