2021/07/02
Keio University School of Medicine
Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo
Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST)
A research group led by Associate Professor Mutsuo Nuritomi, Postdoctoral Fellow Yosuke Ashikari (currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University), and Professor Masato Yasui of the Department of Pharmacology, Keio University School of Medicine, in collaboration with Professor Yukari Fujimoto of the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science and Technology at Keio University, and Professor Yasuyuki Ozeki of the Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, has successfully developed and applied a tool to visualize the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter exchanged between nerve cells in the brain and is responsible for various brain functions such as movement, cognition, and reward. Furthermore, disruptions in dopamine transmission cause various diseases, including Parkinson's disease. Therefore, to understand brain health and disease, and for applications such as drug development, it is crucial to visualize how dopamine functions in the brain.
Typically, in medical and life sciences, "fluorescent labeling" is used for visualization, which involves tagging with fluorescent molecules called fluorescent dyes or fluorescent proteins. However, dopamine is an extremely small molecule, less than half the size of a fluorescent dye and less than one-hundredth the size of a fluorescent protein. Labeling it with these molecules significantly alters its properties, making it impossible to observe its natural state. Consequently, the behavior of dopamine within brain cells and tissues remained unclear.
In this study, the research group developed "alkyne-tagged dopamine," which is labeled with an alkyne (an acetylenic hydrocarbon). Alkynes are much smaller than dopamine and allow for subsequent observation and detection in various forms. By testing this in cultured cells and animal tissues, they successfully captured the behavior of dopamine.
This research makes it possible to capture the previously unclarified behavior of dopamine within brain cells and tissues, and is expected to open new avenues for research to deepen our understanding of brain health and disease, as well as for drug development.
The results of this research were published in the online edition of "Analytical Chemistry," a journal published by the American Chemical Society (ACS), on July 1, 2021 (US Eastern Time).
Please see below for the full press release.