1. In view of the presence of mu, delta and kappa opioid receptors in the spinal dorsal horn and their apparent involvement in behavioural analgesia, the present experiments addressed the action of selective agonists ionophoresed in the vicinity of rat dorsal horn neurones which were located either in lamina I or in laminae III-V. 2. In laminae III-V, kappa agonists (U50488H and dynorphin A) ca...

A large cDNA fragment that codes for proenkephalin (PENK) was cloned from the rough-skinned newt, Taricha granulosa (GenBank Accession: AY817670). This 1299-bp PENK cDNA extends from the poly(A) sequence on the 3' end into the 5'-UTR (221bp) upstream of an open reading frame that codes for 264 amino acids and a stop codon. Within the precursor are five Met-enkephalin sequences and two C-termina...

Molecular imprinting of morphine and the endogenous neuropeptide [Leu5]enkephalin (Leu-enkephalin) in methacrylic acid-ethylene glycol dimethacrylate copolymers is described. Such molecular imprints possess the capacity to mimic the binding activity of opioid receptors. The recognition properties ofthe resultant imprints were analyzed by radioactive ligand binding analysis. We demonstrate that ...

Because methionine enkephalin contributes to and dynorphin opposes dilation during a 10-min hypoxic exposure, opioids modulate pial artery dilation to this stimulus. However, such modulation may be dependent on the duration of hypoxia. The present study was designed to characterize the modulation of hypoxic pial dilation by opioids as a function of stimulus duration in newborn pigs equipped wit...

Abstract Met-enkephalin, one of the smallest opiate peptides and an important neuro-transmitter, is a widely used benchmarking problem in field molecular simulation. Through its range possible low-temperature conformations separated by free-energy barriers it was previously found to be hard thermalize using straight canonical dynamics simulations. Here, we demonstrate how can use recently propo...