Ma, LQ, Liu C, Wang F, Xie N, Gu J, Fu H, Wang JH, Cai F, Liu J, Chen JG. Activation of phosphatidylinositol-linked novel D1 dopamine receptors inhibits high-voltage-activated Ca currents in primary cultured striatal neurons. J Neurophysiol 101: 2230–2238, 2009. First published February 18, 2009; doi:10.1152/jn.90345.2008. Recent evidences indicate the existence of a putative novel phosphatidyl...

Intrauterine asphyxia is one of the major contributors for perinatal death, mental and physical disorders of surviving children. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) provides a promising solution to hypoxic injury due to its survival-promoting effects. In an attempt to identify possible molecular mechanisms underlying the neuroprotective role of BDNF, we studied extracellular signal-regulat...

R apid communication in the nervous system requires the release and detection of neurotransmitters at synapses. These two events occur at opposite faces of the synaptic cleft and involve very different cellular machinery in presynaptic and postsynaptic compartments. Such asymmetry, manifested by synaptic vesicle exocytosis and recycling at the presynaptic terminal and receptor activation and ge...

Transient receptor potential (TRP) channels often play a role in sensory transduction, including chemosensory transduction. TRP channels, a common downstream target of phosphoinositide (PI) signaling, can be modulated by exogenous phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate [PI(4,5)P2], phosphatidylinositol 3,4,5-trisphosphate [PI(3,4,5)P3] and/or diacylglycerol (DAG). Lobster olfactory receptor neur...

R2D5 is a mouse monoclonal antibody that labels rabbit olfactory receptor neurons. Immunoblot analysis showed that mAb R2D5 recognizes a 22-kD protein with apparent pI of 4.8, which is abundantly contained in the olfactory epithelium and the olfactory bulb. We isolated cDNA for R2D5 antigen and confirmed by Northern analysis and neuronal depletion technique that R2D5 antigen is expressed predom...

The molecular mechanisms determining magnitude and duration of inflammatory pain are still unclear. We assessed the contribution of G protein-coupled receptor kinase (GRK)-6 to inflammatory hyperalgesia in mice. We showed that GRK6 is a critical regulator of severity and duration of cytokine-induced hyperalgesia. In GRK6⁻/⁻ mice, a significantly lower dose (100 times lower) of intraplantar inte...

We have examined the properties of neurons in three subdivisions of the pulvinar of alert, trained rhesus monkeys 1) an inferior, retinotopically mapped area (PI), 2) a lateral, retinotopically organized region (PL), and 3) a dorsomedial visual portion of the lateral pulvinar (Pdm), which has a crude retinotopic organization. We tested the neurons for visual responses to stationary and moving s...

The transient receptor potential (TRP) channel TRPM3 is a calcium-permeable cation channel activated by heat and by the neurosteroid pregnenolone sulfate (PregS). TRPM3 is highly expressed in sensory neurons, where it plays a key role in heat sensing and inflammatory hyperalgesia, and in pancreatic β cells, where its activation enhances glucose-induced insulin release. However, despite its func...

Molecular details of ion channel interactions with modulatory subunits have been investigated widely in transfected cells, but the physiological roles of ion channel modulatory protein complexes in native neurons remain largely unexplored. The Drosophila large-conductance calcium-activated potassium channel (dSlo) binds to and is modulated by its binding partner Slob. We have constructed flies ...

Myo-inositol is an important cellular osmolyte in autoregulation of cell volume and fluid balance, particularly for mammalian brain and kidney cells. We find it also regulates excitability. Myo-inositol is the precursor of phosphoinositides, key signaling lipids including phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate [PI(4,5)P2]. However, whether myo-inositol accumulation during osmoregulation affects ...