Rare Alpine cyanobacterium sheds light on brain-alcohol interaction.

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin's Waggoner Center for Alcohol and Addiction and the Pasteur Institute of France have demonstrated conclusively what was previously only a theoretical neurological pathway for alcohol to reach the brain. The breakthrough came in the form of an obscure bacterium living only in lichen on rocks in the Swiss Alps, which happened to contain a protein sequence remarkably similar to that of a group of key proteins in the human brain.

1. Figure from Sauget, et al. 2013. (a) The original state of the cyanobacterium, Gloebacter violaceus ligand-gated ion channel (GLIC). This is the structure nearly identical to ligand-gated ion channels in the human brain. (b) A slightly modified version of GLIC such that the protein structure even more closely resembles that in humans, pictured here receiving a water molecule. (c) The same modified GLIC receiving an ethanol (pure alcohol) molecule. This is the image that has eluded researchers for years.

Click here to read the press release from UT Austin, and here to read the Science Daily article.

1. Ludovic Sauguet, Rebecca J. Howard, Laurie Malherbe, Ui S. Lee, Pierre-Jean Corringer, R. Adron Harris, Marc Delarue.Structural basis for potentiation by alcohols and anaesthetics in a ligand-gated ion channel. Nature Communications, 2013; 4: 1697 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2682