What is it about?
We have shown for the first time a mechanism of anesthesia that activates an ion channel through lipids in cell membranes. We used super resolution imaging to visualize nanoscopic lipid structures disrupted in the plasma membrane membranes, we converted a channel to be anesthetic sensitive that is otherwise insensitive, and we genetically mutated a fly to resist anesthesia.
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Why is it important?
Amazing science doesn't really understand how anesthetics work. For more than 100 years anesthetics were thought to target cellular membranes, but with no definitive proof. Finally there is a direct molecular link between membrane lipids and the ion channels that produce anesthesia. In recent years, some scientists had given up on the membrane hypothesis and questioned even in education. Going forward educators and medical students will likely consider the membrane as proven target of anesthetics.
Perspectives
I think the anesthetic researchers from 150 years ago would be very pleased to know their hypothesis proved to have merit. I suspect they would have seen what we saw if they had the technology. The super resolution imaging we used was only recently developed and it was critical. Only a very small subset of the membrane is affected, without the right microscope the effect is not visible. Obviously life did not evolve to respond to anesthetic. There must be a fundamental process in all animals that we haven't understood and leads to reversible loss of continuousness. We have a paradigm for finding endogenous anesthetic like molecules and there is a rational pathway for finding a waking compound.
Scott Hansen
Scripps Research Institute
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Studies on the mechanism of general anesthesia, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, May 2020, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2004259117.
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