Question

Experiment #2: An experiment run found that the two enantiomers of Isoflurane do not act the same as anesthetics, in that it took a smaller amount of one to produce the same anesthetic effect as the other. What is a chiral receptor? What roles do chiral receptors play in biological systems? Does the fact that the two enantiomers of Isoflurane do not act the same support or disprove the hypothesis listed above? Explain your answer

Answer 1

● Chiral receptor is a chemical interaction, frequently occurring in living systems, by which a given chiral molecule / receptor recognizes a particular stereoisomer.

● roles that chiral receptor play in biological system that the response of an organism to a particular molecule often depends on how that molecule fits a particular site on a receptor molecule in the organism.

Enantiomers frequently have substantially different biological activity because they bind to receptors in the body that are also chiral.

●    binding of isoflurane enantiomers to LFA-1 was studied using 1-aminoanthracene . The binding site of each enantiomer on LFA-1 was studied using the docking program GLIDE. Functional studies employed the flow-cytometry based ICAM binding assay.

Both enantiomers decreased 1-AMA fluorescence signal , indicating that both competed with 1-AMA and bound to the αL I domain.

both S- and R-isoflurane interact with LFA-1 at the lovastatin site, and impair its ligand binding. 1-AMA displacement assay and docking simulations were unable to detect a statistically significant difference in the interaction of the αL I domain with isoflurane enantiomers.