Abstract
THE circumstantial evidence that anaesthetics act primarily by increasing the fluidity of membranes is quite strong. The gaseous, volatile, barbiturate, steroid and alcohol anaesthetics have all been shown to fluidise phosphatidylcholine–cholesterol lipid bilayers and the demonstration has also been made for some biological membranes1–4. Furthermore, a number of lipophilic substances, such as the higher alkanols, do not fluidise membranes and are not anaesthetics3. In some cases, a correlation between nerve-blocking potency and the action of anaesthetics in perturbing lipid bilayers has been observed5. Moreover, pressure counteracts the fluidising effects of anaesthetics just as it antagonises general anaesthesia in vivo6–9. The overall success of the fluidised lipid hypothesis tends to be its major drawback, for if anaesthetics fluidise membranes indiscriminantly then the hypothesis fails to provide a unique mechanism for their selective depression of neuronal function. We show here that lipid composition may modulate the ability of an anaesthetic to fluidise membranes more than has been generally supposed.
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MILLER, K., PANG, KY. General anaesthetics can selectively perturb lipid bilayer membranes. Nature 263, 253–255 (1976). https://doi.org/10.1038/263253a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/263253a0
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