Opiate Receptor Revisited

Opiate receptor revisited.

OUR identification of opiate receptors 34 yr ago seems distant. Today, receptors for drugs and neurotransmitters are taken for granted. Almost all receptors have been cloned, providing intimate understanding of signal transduction. Modern drug development uses robotics to screen millions of chemicals at dozens of receptors and their subtypes. By contrast, when we began our work, how drugs and n...

Opiate states of memory: receptor mechanisms.

The present studies characterized the receptor mechanisms of morphine-induced states of memory. Morphine (5 mg/kg) produced a state in which rats could learn and retrieve an operant response; retrieval was impaired, however, when the rats were tested in the normal state. Conversely, rats that were trained in the normal state failed to retrieve the response in the morphine state. In either case ...

Neurochemical correlates of opiate receptor regulation.

The actions of opiates and opioid peptides upon nervous tissue are mediated by p, 6, K, and oreceptors [for reviews see Refs. l-31. The p receptor is the high affinity site at which morphine-like opiates produce analgesia and a variety of other classical opiate effects. The 6 receptor exhibits a higher affinity for the naturally occurring enkephalins (a class of shorter opioid peptides) than fo...

Opiate Receptor Subtypes and Brain Function, 71

,u opiate receptor: cDNA cloning and expression

u opiate receptors recognize morphine with high affinity. A 2.1-kb rat brain cDNA whose predicted translation product displays 63% identity with recently described 8 and K opiate receptor sequences was identified through polymerase chain reaction and cDNA homology approaches. This cDNA recognizes a 10.5-kb mRNA that is expressed in thalamic neurons. COS-cell expression confers naloxonazine-, Na...