Abstract
Alcohols act as anaesthetics only up to a certain chain length, beyond which their biological activity disappears. Although the molecular nature of general target sites remains unknown, presently available data support the hypothesis that this ‘cut-off” in anaesthetic activity could be due to a corresponding cut-off in the absorption of long-chain alcohols into lipid-bilayer portions of nerve membranes. To test this hypothesis, we developed a method based on leakage of Ru(bpy) 3 2+ ions across the membrane of dihexadecylphosphate (DHP) vesicles induced by aliphatic alcohols (C 1 to C 18) and some of their ω-diol. The permeant effects of aliphatic linear alcohols expressed as PD 50 values rise to a maximum for n-dodecanol (PD 50=2×10 −3 m 1 −1). Dodecanol was found to be the alcohol which presents the greatest anaesthetic potency among the series of linear aliphatic alcohols (cut-off anaesthetic effect). The results are discussed in terms of the structural physicochemical and geometrical characteristics of the permeating alchohols.
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