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Neuromuscular Transmission—Enzymatic Destruction of Acetylcholine

  • Chapter
Book cover The Peripheral Nervous System

Abstract

The action of acetylcholine (ACh) at peripheral junctions was postulated, from an early stage of its study, to be terminated by its destruction by a specific enzyme (Dale, 1914; Loewi and Navratil, 1926; Eccles, 1937; Marnay and Nachmansohn, 1938). Two main classes of ChE* in nervous tissue have since been described in detail, AChE and BuChE; however, this should be regarded as a broad classification only, since a variety of closely related types actually occur in various sources (Augustinsson, 1963; Usdin, 1970). Both classes split ACh, but AChE does so at a much faster rate than it splits choline esters of butyric or higher acids. BuChE cleaves a wide range of choline esters, with butyrylcholine hydrolysis the fastest. A convenient practical distinction is the high capacity of AChE, but not of BuChE, to hydrolyze acetyl-ß-methyl-choline. Both types also act, more slowly, on some noncholine esters, but ChE enzymes are also distinguished from nonspecific carboxylic esterases by the inhibition of ChE by eserine at 10− 5 M concentration. These distinctions, and their complications and species differences, are reviewed in detail by Augustinsson (1963) and Usdin (1970).

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Abbreviations

ChE:

Cholinesterase (all types)

AChE:

acetylcholinesterase

BuChE:

butyrylcholinesterase

DFP:

diisopropyl fluorophosphate

EM:

electron microscope

PAM:

pyridine-2-aldoxime methiodide

BW 284C51:

1:5-bis (4-allylmethylammonium phenyl)-pentane-3-one diiodide

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  1. Departments of Biochemistry and Biochemical Pharmacology, State University of New York, Buffalo, New York, USA

    Eric A. Barnard

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  1. Department of Physiology, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

    John I. Hubbard

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Barnard, E.A. (1974). Neuromuscular Transmission—Enzymatic Destruction of Acetylcholine. In: Hubbard, J.I. (eds) The Peripheral Nervous System. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-8699-9_9

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