Hi,
I am a perfect amateur in neuroscience, so please be patient with my stupid
question.
Somebody told me that those small molecules like dopamine act as a
neuromessenger at the synaptic site. Also the person told me that Ca2+ is
pretty important, too. Those molecules/ions can work at a very low
concentrations (nanomol/l). (Am I right?)
It means (I guess) the binding constant of the messenger with the receptor
site is extremely large, say logK = 9 or so. It seems somewhat surprising to
me, because possible interactions between them may simply be hydrogen bonding,
hydophobic attraction, or electrostatic attraction in the case of Ca2+; i.e.,
no strong chemical interactions such as covalent bonding or coordination
bonding are expected to occur.
So, here's my question: Why is this interaction so strong, or why can the
messenger work at such a low concentration? In other words, do we know
enough about the microscopic origin of messenger-receptor interactions?
I'd appreciate it if anyone would give me a pointer to a suitable reference
or textbook on the topic. Thanks for your attention,
--
Yours, Honoh Suzuki
internet: suzuki at aries.scs.uiuc.edu
Univ of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Box 37-1, Noyes Lab, 505 S Mathews Ave Urbana IL 61801 USA
