Nature sub-magazine breakthrough! In-situ electrochemical produces nitric oxide, precisely regulating neurons!

, July 2, 2020 /PRNewswire/bio-valley/-- Nitric oxide is an important signaling molecule in the human body that plays a role in establishing neural system connections and helps with learning and memoryIt also acts as a messenger in the cardiovascular and immune systemsbut it is difficult for researchers to study exactly what it does in these systems and how it worksSince it is a gas, there is no practical way to guide it to a particular individual cell to see its effectsNow, a team of scientists and engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and elsewhere has found a way to pinpoint the gas in the body, which could open up new avenues for research into the effects of this important moleculethe discovery, published in the journal NatureNano
Technology, was written by MIT professors Olina Anikeeva, Karthish Manthiram and Yoel Fink, and was carried out by graduate student Jimin Park, postdoctoral student Kyoungs Jinuk, and 10 other scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Taiwan, Japan and IsraelPicture Source:"It's a very important compound," Says Anikeeva said,Nature Nanotechnology"But it has been difficult to understand the relationship between nitric oxide transfer to specific cells and synapses, and the higher level of impact on the learning processSo far, most studies have focused on observing systemic effects, by knocking out the genes responsible for producing enzymesThe human body uses enzymes to produce nitric oxide as a messengerbut she said it was "very barbaric." This is a blow to the system because you don't just affect a particular area, such as the brain, but the whole body, which can have other side effects"
others try to introduce compounds that release nitric oxide when they break down, which have some local effects, but these effects still spread, which is a very slow and uncontrolled processteam's solution is to generate a reaction of nitric oxide using voltage driveThis is similar to larger industrial electrochemical production processes that are relatively modular and controllable, enabling on-demand chemical synthesis on-site"We accepted the concept and said, "You know what? You can control electrochemical processes so locally and modularly that you can even do that at the cellular level," says Manthiram"I think it's even more exciting that if you take advantage of the potential, you have the ability to start production and stop production in an instant."team's key achievement was to find a way for this electrochemically controlled response to be carried out efficiently and selectively onnano
scalesThis requires finding a suitable catalyst material that can generate nitric oxide from a benign precursor materialThey found that nitrites are a promising precursor to electrochemically producing nitric oxide"We came up with the idea of creating a customnano-
particles to catalyze the reaction,"Jin said"They found that enzymes that catalyze nitric oxide production in nature contain iron-sulfur centersInspired by these enzymes, they designed a catalyst consisting of iron sulfide nanoparticles that activates the reaction of nitric oxide in the presence of electric fields and nitrites By further mixing these nanoparticles with platinum, the team was able to improve their electrocatalytic efficiency to reduce the size of the electrocatalytic battery to the size of biological cells, the team has created custom fibers containing positive and negative microelectrodes that are encased in iron sulfide nanoparticles and microfluidic channels used to transmit sodium nitrite (precursor material) When implanted in the brain, these fibers guide the precursor to specific neurons The reaction can then be activated by random electrochemicals through electrodes in the same fiber, producing nitric oxide instantaneously at that point, so that its effects can be recorded in real time , they used the system in a rodent model to activate a brain region that is considered a reward center for motivation and social interaction and plays a role in addiction They proved that it did provoke the expected signal reaction and proved its effectiveness Anikeeva says this "will be a very useful biological research platform because eventually, there will be a way to study the role of nitric oxide in a single cell level as a whole body." She points out that some diseases are associated with the interruption of the nitric oxide signaling pathway, so a more detailed study of how this pathway works may help treat it Picture Source: Nature Nanotechnology Park says this method can be replicated as a way to produce other biomolecules in living organisms "Basically, as long as we find the right catalyst and the right safe starting compound, we can now generate many molecules in this scalable, miniaturized way." This method of generating signal molecules in place may be widely used in biomedicine, he said "
" one of our reviewers points out that this has never been done before -- electrolysis in biological systems has never been used to control biological functions," Anikeeva said "So this is basically the beginning of a field that can be very useful for molecular research in precise location and time transfer as well as for neurobiology or any other biological function." The ability to make molecules in the body as needed could be useful in areas such as immunology or cancer research, she said the project began in a casual conversation between Park and Jin, friends who work in neurobiology and electrochemistry Their initial casual discussions eventually led to full cooperation between several departments But in today's closed world, such encounters and dialogue are unlikely "In the context of such a big change in the world, this cooperation would never have happened if this were an era when we were all separate, not in 2018." (BioValleyBioon.com) references: Producing a gas sepulpte messengerser inside body, on demand In situ electrochemical generation of the oxide neuron foral modulation , Nature Nanotechnology (2020) DOI: 10.1038/s41565-020-0701-x