Brief exposure of a receptor to its natural ligand or to a substancemimicking the ligand's action causes receptor activation and subsequentdownstream cellular responses. Sustained exposure of ligands to manyc ell surfac e rec eptors , e.g. G-protein coupled rec eptors a nd ion otropicglutam ate receptors, c auses rec eptor in tern aliza tion an d therefore‘ downregulation’ of the receptor at the cell surface. Surprisingly, thereis considerably evidence supporting an increase in surface nAChRsfollowing repeated exposure to nicotine in laboratory animals (Markset al., 1983; Schwartz & Kellar, 1983) and in smokers compared tonon-smokers (Benwell et al., 1988; Breese et al., 1997; Perry et al.,1999). This process, which was termed ‘upregulation’, appears to beintrinsic to the receptor as it can be recapitulated in in vitro expressionsystems including Xenopus laevis oocytes, and mammalian cell culturesof non-neuronal origin expressing nAChRs (Peng et al., 1994; Buisson& Bertrand, 2001 ). Moreover, conditions resulting in receptorupregulation in expression systems in vitro and in vivo also increasethe functional response as measured by agonist-evoked whole cell current or Ca2+ influx.
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