Abstract
CONDUCTION of the nervous impulse depends on voltage-sensitive change in the permeability of the nerve cell membrane to sodium ions. The sodium channels that appear during the action potential can be blocked very specifically by various neurotoxins, including tetrodotoxin (TTX) from the puffer fish and saxitoxin (STX) from certain marine algae1. Shrager and Profera2 presented evidence that the binding of TTX to crab nerves is reduced after treatment with a water-soluble carbodiimide and glycine methyl ester as the associated nucleophile. In these chemically modified nerves it follows that the sodium channels should have been rendered insensitive to TTX. Shrager and Profera were unable to test this prediction because in their experiments the nerves became inexcitable after chemical treatment.
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BAKER, P., RUBINSON, K. Chemical modification of crab nerves can make them insensitive to the local anaesthetics tetrodotoxin and saxitoxin. Nature 257, 412–414 (1975). https://doi.org/10.1038/257412a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/257412a0
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