Historical Background
The pharmacological effects of nicotine have long been known, with nicotine first isolated from tobacco plants by Posselt and Reimann in 1828 (Albuquerque et al. 2009). The attempts to isolate the physiologic effect of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) using the Torpedoorganism have been traced back as far as 1885 (Paul Ehrlich) and 1857 (Claude Bernard). It was first proposed to be a protein in 1955 by David Nachmansohn and later biochemically characterized by Changeux, Kasai, and Lee in 1970. In 1983 it became the first ligand-gated ion channel for which the DNA and protein were further defined by using molecular genetics. (For more information on the history of the discovery of nAChRs see...
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Tarren, J.R., Holgate, J.Y., Bartlett, S.E. (2018). Acetylcholine (Nicotinic) Receptor. In: Choi, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Signaling Molecules. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67199-4_101538
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