Nicotine tagged posts

Newly developed sensors visually illustrate how nicotine affects cells from the inside out. When a person takes a puff on a cigarette, nicotine floods into the brain, latching onto receptors on the surface of neurons and producing feelings of happiness. But nicotine does not simply stay on the surface of cells – the drug actually permeates into neural cells and alters them from the inside out. Now, a team of scientists has developed a protein sensor that glows in the presence of nicotine, allowing the researchers to observe nicotine’s movements in cells and reveal more about the nature of nicotine addiction.

The work was led by Henry...

Acetylcholine receptors, also known as nicotinic receptors

Several scientific studies have indicated that nicotine may be beneficial for memory function. Scientists set out to shed further light on the properties attributed to nicotine – which is known to have an adverse effect on health – by determining the precise structure of the nicotinic receptors in the hippocampus region of the brain. Using mouse models for Alzheimer’s disease, they identified the β2 subunit of the nicotinic receptor as a target that, if blocked, prevents the memory loss associated with Alzheimer’s.

Alzheimer’s disease is characterized by two types of lesion: amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary degeneration...