Ligandengesteuerte Ionenkanäle

Structure-activity relationships in cholapod anion carriers: enhanced transmembrane chloride transport through substituent tuning

Chloride transport by a series of steroid-based "cholapod" receptors/carriers was studied in vesicles. The principal method involved preincorporation of the cholapods in the vesicle membranes, and the use of lucigenin fluorescence quenching to detect inward-transported Cl-. The results showed a partial correlation between anion affinity and transport activity, in that changes at the steroidal 7 and 12 positions affected both properties in concert. However, changes at the steroidal 3-position yielded irregular effects. Among the new steroids investigated the bis-p-nitrophenylthiourea 3 showed unprecedented activity, giving measurable transport through membranes with a transporter/lipid ratio of 1:250 000 (an average of <2 transporter molecules per vesicle). Increasing transporter lipophilicity had no effect, and positively charged steroids had low activity. The p-nitrophenyl monourea 25 showed modest but significant activity. Measurements using a second method, requiring the addition of transporters to preformed vesicle suspensions, implied that transporter delivery was problematic in some cases. A series of measurements employing membranes of different thicknesses provided further evidence that the cholapods act as mobile anion carriers.

Solid-phase synthesis and biological activity of a thioether analogue of conotoxin G1

A bicyclic thioether analogue of alpha-conotoxin G1, a neurotoxin found in the venom of cone snails, was synthesized on solid phase. Two successive intramolecular on-bead cyclizations between a cysteine residue and a chloroacetylated reduced peptide bond are the key steps in the synthesis. The first reduced peptide bond was introduced by a reductive alkylation with a 9-fluorenylmethoxycarbonyl protected amino aldehyde, and the second by coupling of a dipeptide building block containing an allyloxycarbonyl protected reduced peptide bond. The desired bicyclic product was obtained as a mixture of two isomers, which were evaluated for their ability to inhibit the muscular nicotinic acetylcholine receptor expressed in Xenopus oocytes. The two isomers were found to have IC(50) values (inhibitory activities) of 144 microM and 48 microM, compared to 0.18 microM for native conotoxin G1.