Abstract
Hypotaurine, 2-aminoethane sulfuric acid, is thought to be the precursor of taurine in the mammalian brain. Taurine biosynthesis has been assumed to proceed from cysteine via cysteine sulfinic acid and hypotaurine intermediates (Jacobsen and Smith, 1968), even though the final step in biosynthesis, the oxidation of hypotaurine to taurine, has never been satisfactorily demonstrated (Oja et al., 1977). Only quite recently have we been able to characterize some properties of that reaction and to confirm its enzymatic nature (Kontro and Oja, 1978a). Hypotaurine is the most potent inhibitor of taurine transport among its structural analogues, as shown first with brain slices (Lähdesmäki and Oja, 1973) and then with different CNS preparations (Schmid et al., 1975; Kennedy and Voaden, 1976; Sieghart and Karobath, 1976). The transport of taurine has been studied to some extent by several investigators (see Oja and Kontro, 1978), but no work has been done on the transport of hypotaurine itself.
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Kontro, P., Oja, S.S. (1981). Properties of Hypotaurine Uptake in Mouse Brain Slices. In: Schaffer, S.W., Baskin, S.I., Kocsis, J.J. (eds) The Effects of Taurine on Excitable Tissues. Monographs of the Physiological Society of Philadelphia, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-8093-8_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-8093-8_5
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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