Their new work, just published in PNAS, suggests that volatile anesthetics operate by perturbing the internal electronic structure of proteins. This would lead to changes in electron currents in those proteins, in cells, and in the organism. They dont just theorize about these effects, they actually measure the electron currents in anesthetized flies using a technique known as electron spin resonance (often called electron paramagnetic resonance). What Turin and colleagues have shown is that the total amount of free electron spins in fruit flies increases when they are exposed to general anaesthetics. The amount of free spins generated during anesthesia is independent of melanin content and far larger than any signal previously measured from free radicals which are the other source of spin. These are normally very unstable and undetectable in the absence of spin traps to capture them. Furthermore, mutants of Drosophila which have been selected for resistance to certain anesthetics show a reduced, sometimes absent spin signal.
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 03:31:08 +0000
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