Abstract
The development of a radiochemical enzyme assay for the quantitative determination of p-octopamine (Molinoff et al, 1969) led to its discovery in a wide variety of invertebrate nerve systems and in mammalian sympathetic nerves. Subsequent work led to the conclusion that p-octopamine is an invertebrate neurotransmitter and a cotransmitter with norepinephrine in mammalian sympathetic nerves (Axelrod and Saavedra, 1977). It was discovered in 1976 that the radiochemical enzyme assay was not specific for p-octopamine because the m- and p- isomers of octopamine could not be resolved. The use of a modification of the technique showed that both m- and p-octopamine are present in rat salivary gland (Robertson et al, 1977) and brain (Danielson et al, 1977). The radiochemical enzyme assay depends upon norepinephrine N-methyltransf erase, which can accept all three positional isomers of octopamines as substrates with varying efficiency. The resultant products, the corresponding synephrines, are also substrates for the enzyme (Axelrod, 1962; Fuller et al, 1981). Consequently any one of these amines (or a mixture of them) would have been detected by the original unmodified assay but identified and quantified as p-octopamine.
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Williams, C.M., Couch, M.W., Midgley, J.M. (1984). Natural Occurrence and Metabolism of the Isomeric Octopamines and Synephrines. In: Boulton, A.A., Baker, G.B., Dewhurst, W.G., Sandler, M. (eds) Neurobiology of the Trace Amines. Humana Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-5312-9_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-5312-9_9
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