• DOI:10.1042/BJ1280187
• Corpus ID: 35874131

The isolation of an acetylcholine- and decamethonium-binding protein from housefly heads.

@article{Cattell1972TheIO,
  title={The isolation of an acetylcholine- and decamethonium-binding protein from housefly heads.},
  author={Kenneth J. Cattell and John F. Donnellan},
  journal={The Biochemical journal},
  year={1972},
  volume={128 1},
  pages={
          187-9
        }
}

• K. J. Cattell, J. F. Donnellan
• Published 1 June 1972
• Biology, Chemistry
• The Biochemical journal

Protein fractions thought to contain an acetylcholine-receptor molecule have been isolated from a variety ofnervous tissues. The experimental approach used by Miledi &Potter (1971) and Miledi etal. (1971) has been to label receptor molecules in the electric organs of fish or vertebrate muscle preparations with radioiodinated a-bungarotoxin in order to facilitate their isolation by fractionation techniques involving the use of detergent solutions. De Robertis and his co-workers (De Robertis & Fiszer de Plazas, 1970; Gomez et al., 1970; De Robertis et al., 1970; Lunt et al., 1971) have used chloroform-methanol mixtures to extract from vertebrate brain and muscle tissue and from the electroplax of the electric eel hydrophobic protein-lipid complexes (proteolipids) that show high-affinity binding for cholinergic ligands and exhibit many of the properties expected of an acetylcholine-receptor molecule. Both groups have demonstrated that acetylcholine-binding activity is not due to the presence of acetylcholine esterase in their preparations. It is possible that the fractions isolated by these two radically different experimental approaches contain the same acetylcholine-binding component. We now describe experiments showing that a proteolipid fraction with similar properties to those of the 'acetylcholine-receptor proteolipids' described by De Robertis and his co-workers can be isolated from insect nervous tissue. The presence of an acetylcholine-binding component in aqueous homogenates of housefly heads has been reported (Eldefrawi & O'Brien, 1970).