Excitatory Effects of Orexin-A on Nucleus Tractus Solitarius Neurons Are Mediated by Phospholipase C and Protein Kinase C
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Orexin (ORX)-A is a 33-amino acid peptide with demonstrated roles in the regulation of energy metabolism, autonomic control, and sleep. Orexin receptors (OXRs), OX1R and OX2R, and immunoreactive axons are present in the nucleus tractus solitarius (NTS). We demonstrated previously that bath application of ORX-A depolarizes NTS neurons through activation of a nonselective cationic conductance (NSCC) and inhibition of a sustained potassium current (IK). The present study examined the signaling pathways underlying the excitatory effects of ORX-A on NTS neurons using whole-cell patch-clamp recording techniques. Inclusion of guanosine 5'-O-(2-thiodiphosphate) in the internal pipette solution abolished the effects of ORX-A, confirming that the actions of ORX-A are mediated by G-protein-coupled receptors. The responses of ORX-A were also blocked by a phospholipase C (PLC) inhibitor, D609, and by a nonselective protein kinase (PK) inhibitor, H7, demonstrating the involvement of PLC and protein kinases. However, PKA appears not to play a role, because the depolarizing effects of ORX-A were still observed when the PKA inhibitor peptide (6-22) was included in the pipette solution, and bath application of 8-bromo-cAMP (a PKA agonist) was without effect on NTS neurons. In contrast, 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate (a PKC agonist) depolarized NTS neurons, and bisindolylmaleimide (BIS), a PKC inhibitor, abolished the depolarizing effects of ORX-A. Finally, voltage-clamp experiments demonstrated that BIS also blocked the activation of NSCC and inhibition of IK by ORX-A in NTS neurons. These results therefore show that the excitatory effects of ORX-A on NTS neurons are mediated through activation of the PLC-PKC-NSCC and -IK signaling pathways, which probably result from OXR-coupled activation of Gq.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.012 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".