Word: receptor
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Hartline and Granit, by contrast, are primarily electro-physiologists who have made important discoveries regarding the nervous responses of vision. Hartline, 63, a professor at New York's Rockefeller University, has traced the patterns of nerve responses after light touches the retina's receptors. Using horseshoe crabs, which have relatively simple eyes, and frogs, he recorded the electrical signals sent out by a single nerve fiber, learned the neural influences of one receptor cell on another. "We listened in," he explains, "on the small traffic signals in the body of the crab...
...times their usual narcotic dose was required to give them any euphoric effect at all. Cyclazocine, which is itself nonaddictive, apparently has no serious side effects after tolerance is built up, and substantially reduces the physiological impact of morphine-based narcotics, probably by preventing the morphine from reaching receptor sites in the nervous system...
...chemical, nicknamed PAM, which proved an effective antidote to deadly nerve gases. Now his explanation of how nerves work offers insight into yet another obscure matter: how nerves are deadened by anesthesia. The discovery that such anesthetics as procaine and the Indian poison curare combine easily with the receptor protein, blocking the biochemical reaction, could lead to better anesthetics and more efficient drugs for treating disorders of the human nervous system. "One of the basic functions of human life is coming closer to being understood," said Dr. Nachmansohn...
...isolating a "receptor" protein, the Columbia biochemists proved that the same reaction that takes place at the synapse is repeated all along the length of the nerve. When a nerve is stimulated, a chemical called acetylcholine is released within the nerve. It combines with the receptor protein, causing an interchange of sodium and potassium ions. The ions in turn trigger release of more acetylcholine a bit farther along the line, letting the current advance. To turn off the signal, an enzyme, cholinesterase, is released that instantly destroys the acetylcholine in the nerve...