Opioid drugs have powerful antidiarrheal effects and many patients taking these drugs for chronic pain relief experience chronic constipation that can progress to opioid-induced bowel dysfunction. Three classes of opioid receptors are expressed by enteric neurons: μ-, δ-, and κ-opioid receptors (MOR, DOR, and KOR). MOR and DOR couple to inhibition of adenylate cylase and nerve terminal Ca(2+) c...

cGMP controls many cellular functions ranging from growth, viability, and differentiation to contractility, secretion, and ion transport. The mammalian genome encodes seven transmembrane guanylyl cyclases (GCs), GC-A to GC-G, which mainly modulate submembrane cGMP microdomains. These GCs share a unique topology comprising an extracellular domain, a short transmembrane region, and an intracellul...

Cocaine- and antidepressant-sensitive norepinephrine and serotonin transporters (NETs and SERTs) are closely related members of the Na+/Cl- transporter gene family, whose other members include transporters for inhibitory amino acid transmitters, neuromodulators, osmolytes and nutrients. Availability of cloned NET and SERT cDNAs has permitted rapid progress in the definition of cellular sites of...

This second edition of the Molecular and Cellular Physiology of Neurons by Professor Gordon Fain is a masterpiece. The book is a concise and updated version of its previous 1999 edition of a textbook, which is well written and with easy to understand topics that are fundamental for those who are deeply interested in understanding the detailed principles of neuronal physiology at the molecular l...