Anesthetic Alterations of Collective Terahertz Oscillations in Tubulin Correlate with Clinical Potency: Implications for Anesthetic Action and Post-Operative Cognitive Dysfunction.

ABSTRACT: Anesthesia blocks consciousness and memory while sparing non-conscious brain activities. While the exact mechanisms of anesthetic action are unknown, the Meyer-Overton correlation provides a link between anesthetic potency and solubility in a lipid-like, non-polar medium. Anesthetic action is also related to an anesthetic's hydrophobicity, permanent dipole, and polarizability, and is accepted to occur in lipid-like, non-polar regions within brain proteins. Generally the protein target for anesthetics is assumed to be neuronal membrane receptors and ion channels, however new evidence points to critical effects on intra-neuronal microtubules, a target of interest due to their potential role in post-operative cognitive dysfunction (POCD). Here we use binding site predictions on tubulin, the p

SUBMITTER: Craddock TJA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5575257 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature