PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Sambashiva Banala
AU  - Matthew C. Arvin
AU  - Nicolas M. Bannon
AU  - Xiao-Tao Jin
AU  - Yong Wang
AU  - Guiqing Zhao
AU  - John J. Marshall
AU  - Kyle R. Gee
AU  - David L. Wokosin
AU  - Anis Contractor
AU  - Henry A. Lester
AU  - Yevgenia Kozorovitskiy
AU  - Ryan M. Drenan
AU  - Luke D. Lavis
TI  - Development of photoactivatable drugs enables nicotinic optopharmacology
AID  - 10.1101/260232
DP  - 2018 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 260232
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/02/05/260232.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/02/05/260232.full
AB  - Photoactivatable (‘caged’) pharmacological agents have revolutionized neuroscience but the palette of available ligands is limited. We describe a general method for caging tertiary amines using an unconventional quaternary ammonium linkage that is chemically stable and elicits a desirable red-shift in activation wavelength. A photoactivatable nicotine (PA-Nic) prepared using this strategy could be uncaged via 1- or 2-photon excitation, making it useful for optopharmacology experiments to study nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) in different experimental preparations and spatiotemporal scales.