Neurotransmitter classical

In the trans Golgi compartment the peptide is sorted via secretory vesicles into a regulated pathway. In contrast to vesicles of the constitutive pathway, vesicles of the regulated pathway are stored in the cytoplasm until their stimulated release. Membrane depolarisation as well as a wide range of substances such as intracellular mediators, neuropeptides, neurotransmitters, classical hormones, cytokines, growth factors, ions and nutrients induce somatostatin secretion. General inhibitors of somatostatin release are opiates, GABA, leptin and TGF- 3. 

An overview of some of the processes involved in synaptic transmission is shown in Figure 10-1. Many of the processes are discussed below or in other chapters of this book. Many different types of substance are neurotransmitters. Classical neurotransmitters, such as ACh (see Ch. 11) and norepinephrine (NE see Ch. 12), are low-molecular-weight substances that have no other function but to serve as neurotransmitters. The predominant excitatory neurotransmitter in the brain, glutamate, and the inhibitory neurotransmitter in the spinal cord, glycine, are common and essential amino acids (see Chs 15 and 16). 

Adenosine production in the synapse is not through vesicular release in response to nerve firing, as is the case for classical neurotransmitters. Rather, adenosine acts as a local autacoid, the release of which increases upon stress to an organ or tissue. Most cells in culture and in situ produce and release adenosine extracellularly. This... 

Unlike classical neurotransmitters, adenosine does not have a rapid synaptic uptake system (as for the biogenic amines), and its chemical inactivation system is not as rapid as for the transmitter acetylcholine, for example. Adenosine may be metabolized extracellularly and inactivated with respect to the ARs in a more general fashion by the widespread enzymes adenosine kinase (AK, to produce AMP) and adenosine deaminase (AD, to produce inosine). Both AMP and inosine are only weakly active at ARs, depending on the subtype. 

Trace amines are a family of endogenous monoamine compounds including (3-phenylethylamine (PEA), p-tyramine (TYR), tryptamine (TRP) and octopamine (OCT). The trace amines share close structural similarity with the well known classical monoamine neurotransmitters such as dopamine (DA), norepinephrine (NE) and serotonin (5-HT). As their name suggests, trace amines occur in comparably much lower abundance than monoamine neurotransmitters. For historical reasons, other endogenous amine compounds which might share some structural similarities with PEA, TYR, TRP or OCT are not referred to as trace amines. 

The rate of synthesis is similar for trace amines and monoamine neurotransmitters, however, trace amines undergo a more rapid turnover due to their higher affinity to MAO and the lack of comparable cellular storage. Thus, the tissue concentration of trace amines in the vertebrate central nervous system is estimated to be in the range of 1-100 nM, depending on the trace amine and brain area, in contrast to micromolar concentrations of classic monoamine neurotransmitters. 

The exocytotic release of neurotransmitters from synaptic vesicles underlies most information processing by the brain. Since classical neurotransmitters including monoamines, acetylcholine, GABA, and glutamate are synthesized in the cytoplasm, a mechanism is required for their accumulation in synaptic vesicles. Vesicular transporters are multitransmembrane domain proteins that mediate this process by coupling the movement of neurotransmitters to the proton electrochemical gradient across the vesicle membrane. 

Synaptic vesicles mediate the release of small molecules other than classical neurotransmitters and neuropeptides. Of these, zinc and ATP are the best characterized. NMDA and GABA receptors contain binding sites for zinc, and zinc exerts a direct effect on... 

Many anodic oxidations involve an ECE pathway. For example, the neurotransmitter epinephrine can be oxidized to its quinone, which proceeds via cyclization to leukoadrenochrome. The latter can rapidly undergo electron transfer to form adrenochrome (5). The electrochemical oxidation of aniline is another classical example of an ECE pathway (6). The cation radical thus formed rapidly undergoes a dimerization reaction to yield an easily oxidized p-aminodiphenylamine product. Another example (of industrial relevance) is the reductive coupling of activated olefins to yield a radical anion, which reacts with the parent olefin to give a reducible dimer (7). If the chemical step is very fast (in comparison to the electron-transfer process), the system will behave as an EE mechanism (of two successive charge-transfer steps). Table 2-1 summarizes common electrochemical mechanisms involving coupled chemical reactions. Powerful cyclic voltammetric computational simulators, exploring the behavior of virtually any user-specific mechanism, have... 

A glance at the structure of the classical neurotransmitters (Fig. 1.1) shows that apart from the peptides (D) (and purines, E), most of them are fairly simple chemicals. Some authors therefore divide them into small (e.g. A, B, C) and large (peptides, D) molecular NTs. Although we will see that peptides certainly have some properties different from other NTs, in that they rarely have a primary neurotransmitter function and usually just complement the actions of those NTs in groups A-C, to put them in a class of their own and group all the others together simply on the basis of molecular size is inappropriate and misleading since it elevates the peptides to a status that is neither proven nor warranted. 

These approaches are, in any case, only suitable for classical neurotransmitters. Those with slow background effects will probably not be released in large amounts. For such substances we require a measure of their utilisation, or turnover, over a much longer period of time. With NTs released from short-axon interneurons there are no pathways to stimulate and it becomes necessary to activate the neurons intrinsically by field stimulation, which is of necessity not specific to the terminals of the interneurons. 

Figure 4.1 Turnover of classical neurotransmitters. At normal rates of neuronal activity, endogenous stores of neurotransmitter are maintained at constant (steady-state) levels, indicating that the supply of new neurotransmitter (through synthesis) meets the demand (determined by release and metabolism). Consequently, the rate of the depletion (A) of the endogenous store of transmitter after inhibition of its synthesis indicates turnover rate and is described by the equation ...

O Classic views as to the cause of major depressive disorder focus on the monoamine neurotransmitters norepinephrine (NE), serotonin (5-HT), and to a lesser extent, dopamine (DA) in terms of both synaptic concentrations and receptor functioning. 

Immediately after synthesis, endocannabinoids are released in the extracellular space, where they then act on the same or neighboring cells as autocrine or paracrine mediators (Di Marzo, 1999). Experimental evidence thus far indicates that anandamide and 2-AG, unlike other classical neurotransmitters, are not stored in vesicles. First, anandamide basal concentrations are extremely low (5-10 pmol/g), 100 to 10,000 times lower than those of classical neurotransmitters (Cadas, 1997). Second, stimulus-dependent anandamide release is linked with de novo NAPE and... 

Anandamide is inactivated in two steps, first by transport inside the cell and subsequently by intracellular enzymatic hydrolysis. The transport of anandamide inside the cell is a carrier-mediated activity, having been shown to be a saturable, time- and temperature-dependent process that involves some protein with high affinity and specificity for anandamide (Beltramo, 1997). This transport process, unlike that of classical neurotransmitters, is Na+-independent and driven only by the concentration gradient of anandamide (Piomelli, 1998). Although the anandamide transporter protein has not been cloned yet, its well characterized activity is known to be inhibited by specific transporter inhibitors. Reuptake of 2-AG is probably mediated by the same facilitating mechanism (Di Marzo, 1999a,b Piomelli, 1999). 

The concept of chemical neurotransmission originated in the 1920s with the classic experiments of Otto Loewi (which were themselves inspired by a dream), who demonstrated that by transferring the ventricular fluid of a stimulated frog heart onto an unstimulated frog heart he could reproduce the effects of a (parasympathetic) nerve stimulus on the unstimulated heart (Loewi Navratil, 1926). Subsequently, it was found that acetylcholine was the neurotransmitter released from these parasympathetic nerve fibers. As well as playing a critical role in synaptic transmission in the autonomic nervous system and at vertebrate neuromuscular junctions (Dale, 1935), acetylcholine plays a central role in the control of wakefulness and REM sleep. Some have even gone as far as to call acetylcholine a neurotransmitter correlate of consciousness (Perry et al., 1999). 

The evolution of understanding of the roles of classical neurotransmitters versus those of neuropeptides is perhaps best displayed by research in nematodes. For many years, cutting-edge research on the physiology of nematodes focused on the actions of the classical... 

Vesicular proteins and lipids that are destined for the plasma membrane leave the TGN sorting station continuously. Incorporation into the plasma membrane is typically targeted to a particular membrane domain (dendrite, axon, presynaptic, postsynaptic membrane, etc.) but may or may not be triggered by extracellular stimuli. Exocytosis is the eukaryotic cellular process defined as the fusion of the vesicular membrane with the plasma membrane, leading to continuity between the intravesicular space and the extracellular space. Exocytosis carries out two main functions it provides membrane proteins and lipids from the vesicle membrane to the plasma membrane and releases the soluble contents of the lumen (proteins, peptides, etc.) to the extracellular milieu. Historically, exocytosis has been subdivided into constitutive and regulated (Fig. 9-6), where release of classical neurotransmitters at the synaptic terminal is a special case of regulated secretion [54]. 

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