Abstract
Hypotaurine, 2-aminoethanesulfinic acid, an immediate precursor in taurine biosynthesis (3), is converted to taurine also in brain tissue (10). Hypotaurine concentration in the rat brain is 0.07 mmole/kg fresh weight, i.e. higher than that of the biogenic amine precursors, phenylalanine and tryptophan (21). Taurine transport has been studied in different nervous tissue preparations (16,19) and its penetration into brain tissue has been found to be very slow both in vivo (18) and in vitro (8) when compared to the putative amino acid transmitters. Now we have characterized the properties of hypotaurine by mouse brain slices in vitro. The uptake was found to be strikingly fast and efficient, generating exceptionally high concentration gradients and consisting of two sodium-dependent high-affinity and low-affinity transport systems.
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