Signal Transduction Mechanisms of Tachykinin Effects on Ion Channels

Abstract

In 1971, Konishi and Otsuka found that application of physalaemin produced a depolarization in spinal motoneurons. Physalaemin is one of the tachykinins (named by Erspamer and Anastasi, 1966) extracted from frog skin (Erspamer et al., 1964). This was the first electrophysiological experiment on tachykinin effects. Subsequently, Otsuka et al. (1972) applied substance P (SP), which had just been identified and synthesized by Leeman’s group (Chang and Leeman, 1970; Chang et al., 1971; Tregear et al., 1971), to spinal motoneurons and obtained similar depolarizations. Since then, many papers have appeared dealing with the effects of tachykinins on the electrical activities of various kinds of cells, and in almost all cases tachykinins produced excitation (Konishi and Otsuka, 1974; Krnjevic and Morris, 1974; Henry et al., 1975; Henry, 1976; Guyenet and Aghajanian, 1977; Krnjevic, 1977; Randic and Miletic, 1977; Otsuka and Takahashi, 1977; Katayama and North, 1978; Nicoll, 1978; Katayama et al., 1979; Dun and Karczmar, 1979; Konishi et al., 1979; Vincent and Barker, 1979; Nicoll et al., 1980; Dun and Minota, 1981; Jan and Jan, 1982; Nowak and Macdonald, 1982; Adams et al., 1983; Cheeseman et al., 1983; Nakajima et al., 1985; Stanfield et al., 1985; Murase et al., 1986, Murase et al., 1989; Yamaguchi et al., 1990; Koyano et al., 1991, Konishi et al., 1993; Konishi et al., 1992; Shen and North, 1992).