CNR NANO - Istituto Nanoscienze Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche

- 27.06.2018 - S3 Seminar Tamara Rosenbaum
Date and Time: Wednesday June 27 , 2018 - 15:00
Venue: S3 Seminar Room, Third Floor, Physics Building, FIM Department

Speaker: Tamara Rosenbaum
Departamento de Neurociencia Cognitiva, Instituto de Fisiología Celular, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad de México, México

Title:The link between pain, itch, fatty acids and TRPV1

Abstract: The activity of ion channels can be regulated by molecules of a lipidic nature. My lab has studied the role of activators and inhibitors of the TRPV1 channel, which is widely linked to painful processes.
Lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) is among the lipids that have recently emerged as regulators of the function of ion channels through direct or indirect actions. For several years, LPA was thought to produce pain solely through the activation of specific G protein-coupled receptors. Recently our group described that LPA can effectively activate the TRPV1 channel when applied to either the intra or extracellular faces of the membrane and that the response to LPA is dose-dependent. Moreover, we have shown that LPA relies on, at least one, positively charged residue (K710) in the proximal C-terminus of the TRPV1 channel to directly gate TRPV1. Such an activation of TRPV1 by LPA is physiologically relevant since it leads to the generation of action potentials in dorsal root ganglia (DRG) neurons and to pain in mice.
In contrast, another lipid molecule which is oleic acid (OA) and that resembles LPA in structure, inhibits the activation of TRPV1 in response to several stimuli. Our lab has shown that OA interacts with the capsaicin binding pocket and renders TRPV1 insensitive, leading to a decrease in pain and itch in mice.

>strong>Host: Andrea Alessandrini andrea.alessandrini@unimore.it