The Role of Taurine in the Anoxia‐Tolerant Western Painted Turtle Brain
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Unlike the anoxia‐intolerant mammalian brain, which undergoes hyperexcitability and neuronal death in response to anoxia, the western painted turtle ( Chrysemys picta) can survive extended periods of anoxia without significant neuronal damage. This is in part accomplished by a large increase in the concentration of the inhibitory neurotransmitter gamma‐aminobutyric acid (GABA) resulting in suppression of spontaneous electrical activity (i.e. spike arrest) through a mechanism known as shunting inhibition. In addition to GABA, levels of the amino acid taurine also increase in the anoxic turtle brain, but its function is not known. It is speculated that taurine can function like a neurotransmitter by acting through GABA receptors. Given the important role of GABA in the anoxic turtle brain, we wanted to investigate the role of taurine by determing whether turtle cortical neurons are responsive to taurine and what receptor(s) taurine may be acting through. Using the whole cell patch clamp technique, we measured the electophysiological properties of neurons in response to taurine. We found that 10mM taurine caused the membrane potential of cortical neurons to depolarize approximately 8mV, similar to the effects of GABA and anoxia. Additionally taurine increased the whole cell conductance (G w ) >2‐fold. These effects were reduced but not completely abolished when strychnine, a glycine receptor antagonist, and/or gabazine, a GABA A receptor antagonist were applied. Together these results suggest that taurine can act through both glycine and GABA receptors to effect turtle cortical neurons and therefore may also play a signaling role during anoxia in the turtle cortex. Support or Funding Information This research is supported by the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS) and Canadian Graduate Scholarship‐Master's (CGS‐M NSERC) awarded to Ashley Miles and the Discovery Accelerator Supplements Grant awarded to Les Buck.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| 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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".