Taurine osmolyte

An especially economical solution to acquisition of organic osmolytes is to exploit metabolic end-products, metabolites that have no further use to the organism as substrates for ATP generation or as building blocks for biosynthesis. Urea would seem to be the classic example of this type of strategy, although several other organic osmolytes also are metabolic end-pro-ducts or derivatives of these products, for instance, TMAO and taurine. 

Taurine in the Central Nervous System There is a relatively high concentration of taurine in the central nervous system - higher than would be expected for a neurotransmitter and without a specific anatomical localization. As in the retina, the main function of taurine in the central nervous system seems to be as an osmolyte (Hussy et al., 2000 Saransaari and Oja, 2000). 

Fig. 1). These monoamine transporters belong to the SLC6 gene family of Na -Cl"-coupled neurotransmitter transporters that is also referred to as the neurotransmitter sodium symporter (NSS) family (Chen et al., 2004). In addition to the monoamine transporters, the NSS family includes subfamilies of transporters for GABA, amino acids, creatine, and the osmolytes betaine and taurine (Chen et al., 2004). 

High cell volume activates the Cl chaimel, which begins the release of certain osmolytes (taurine, betaine, and inositol)... 

---