Liu Y, Peter D, Roghani A, Schuldiner S, Privé G G, Eisenberg D, Brecha N, Edwards R H
Department of Neurology, University of California, School of Medicine, Los Angeles 90024-1769.
Cell. 1992 Aug 21;70(4):539-51. doi: 10.1016/0092-8674(92)90425-c.
Classical neurotransmitters are transported into synaptic vesicles so that their release can be regulated by neural activity. In addition, the vesicular transport of biogenic amines modulates susceptibility to N-methyl-4-phenylpyridinium (MPP+), the active metabolite of the neurotoxin N-methyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine that produces a model of Parkinson's disease. Taking advantage of selection in MPP+, we have used gene transfer followed by plasmid rescue to identify a cDNA clone that encodes a vesicular amine transporter. The sequence predicts a novel mammalian protein with 12 transmembrane domains and homology to a class of bacterial drug resistance transporters. We have detected messenger RNA transcripts for this transporter only in the adrenal gland. Monoamine cell populations in the brain stem express a distinct but highly related protein.
