2012/06/25 by Travis J. A. Craddock, Marc St. George, Holly Freedman +4 · 3 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Neuroscience · Chemistry · Medicine · #Microtubule and mitosis dynamics #ATP Synthase and ATPases Research #Photoreceptor and optogenetics research #Microtubule #Cytoskeleton #Tubulin #Anesthetic #Halothane #Cell biology #Tau protein #Biology #Chemistry #Neuroscience #Biochemistry #Medicine #Alzheimer's disease #Cell #Disease #Pathology #Anesthesia
paper · pdf · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0037251
openalex publication_date 2012/06/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
The cytoskeleton is essential to cell morphology, cargo trafficking, and cell division. As the neuronal cytoskeleton is extremely complex, it is no wonder that a startling number of neurodegenerative disorders (including but not limited to Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease) share the common feature of a dysfunctional neuronal cytoskeleton. Recently, concern has been raised about a possible link between anesthesia, post-operative cognitive dysfunction, and the exacerbation of neurodegenerative disorders. Experimental investigations suggest that anesthetics bind to and affect cytoskeletal microtubules, and that anesthesia-related cognitive dysfunction involves microtubule instability, hyper-phosphorylation of the microtubule-associated protein tau, and tau separation from microtubules. However, exact mechanisms are yet to be identified. In this paper the interaction of anesthetics with the microtubule subunit protein tubulin is investigated using computer-modeling methods. Homology modeling, molecular dynamics simulations and surface geometry techniques were used to determine putative binding sites for volatile anesthetics on tubulin. This was followed by free energy based docking calculations for halothane (2-bromo-2-chloro-1,1,1-trifluoroethane) on the tubulin body, and C-terminal regions for specific tubulin isotypes. Locations of the putative binding sites, halothane binding energies and the relation to cytoskeleton function are reported in this paper.