Abstract
Soon after the first reports on mammalian nitric oxide (NO) synthesis in 1987 [1, 2], cytosols of cytokine-activated macrophages were shown to contain an enzymatic activity catalyzing an NADPH-dependent conversion of the amino acid L-arginine to NO [3]. Subsequently, enzymatic NO formation was described for a variety of tissues. Consistent with the apparent involvement of Ca2+ in NO-mediated signal transduction in blood vessels [4] and neurons [5], NO synthesis turned out to require micromolar concentrations of free Ca2+ in endothelial cells [6] and brain [7, 8], whereas enzymatic NO formation occurred in a Ca2+-independent manner in cytokine-activated macrophages [3]. In the meantime our knowledge about this novel biochemical pathway has rapidly grown. The present chapter briefly reviews molecular mechanisms and regulation of NO biosynthesis with special focus on the enzymology of NO-synthesizing enzymes, the NO synthases (NOS).KeywordsNitric OxideNitric OxideSoluble Guanylyl CyclasePteridine DerivativeBidomain StructureThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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