Scientific session of the Division of General Physics and Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences (22 December 1999) Nitric oxide and its detection in biological systems by the electron paramagnetic resonance technique

摘要

Biologists, biochemists, and biophysicists have recently been faced with an unexpected fact. It has turned out that animal and human cells and tissues contain a very simple compound, a two-atomic molecule of nitric oxide (NO), which can function as an endogenous regulator of metabolic and physiological processes alongside bigger molecules including proteins. Before this fact emerged, it had been universally accepted that highly selective bioregulation is feasible only through the specific interaction between chemical regulators (signal molecules, according to the current usage) and corresponding receptors on the cell surface. Such selective interaction, which is indispensable for an extracellular signal to be taken up by the cell, is believed to be mediated through the specific spatial structure of a signal molecule complementary to the molecular structure of the receptor, specific electron density distribution on the signal molecule, its ability to change these parameters upon binding to the receptor, etc.