A unitary anesthetic binding site at high resolution.

ABSTRACT: Propofol is the most widely used injectable general anesthetic. Its targets include ligand-gated ion channels such as the GABA(A) receptor, but such receptor-channel complexes remain challenging to study at atomic resolution. Until structural biology methods advance to the point of being able to deal with systems such as the GABA(A) receptor, it will be necessary to use more tractable surrogates to probe the molecular details of anesthetic recognition. We have previously shown that recognition of inhalational general anesthetics by the model protein apoferritin closely mirrors recognition by more complex and clinically relevant protein targets; here we show that apoferritin also binds propofol and related GABAergic anesthetics, and that the same binding site mediates recognition of both in

SUBMITTER: Vedula LS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2782011 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature