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Elsevier, Biochemical Pharmacology, 2(94), p. 155-163, 2015

DOI: 10.1016/j.bcp.2015.01.011

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α-conotoxin MrIC is a biased agonist at α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors

This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Abstract

MrIC is a recently described selective agonist of endogenously expressed α7 nAChR. In this study, we further characterise the pharmacological activity of MrIC using Ca2+ imaging approaches in SH-SY5Y cells endogenously expressing α7 nAChR and demonstrate that MrIC exclusively activates α7 nAChR modulated by type II positive allosteric modulators, including PNU120596. MrIC was a full agonist at PNU120596-modulated α7 nAChR compared with choline, albeit with slower kinetics compared to choline, but failed to elicit a Ca2+ response in the absence of PNU120596. Interestingly, the NMR structure of MrIC showed a typical 4/7 α-conotoxin fold, indicating that its unusual pharmacological activity is likely sequence-dependent. Overall, our results suggest that MrIC acts as a biased agonist that can only activate α7 nAChR modified by type II allosteric modulators, and thus represents a valuable tool to probe the pharmacological properties of this important ion channel.