Drug Induced Alterations in Brain Biosynthetic Enzyme Activity--A Model for Adaptation to the Environment by the Central Nervous System

Abstract

Neurochemistry in a way similar to other areas of biochemistry has come to the time in its history in which the simple outlining of metabolic paths has for the most part been completed. Enzymology in the classical sense (elucidation of kinetics, co-factor requirements, and characteristics of more or less purified enzymes) has been superceded by a concern for how such complex and interrelated activities are regulated. Regulation would seem to be of utmost importance in understanding the brain, which on one hand must be exquisitely sensitive to subtle environmental alterations and at the same time cannot allow itself to move too far away from a homeostatic or compensated state. It would seem more specifically that the brain, involved principally with information processing, must be able to regulate the rate of biosynthesis and degradation of intercellular messengers. Several metabolic systems can be considered to belong to this class of messengers.