Wessler Ignaz Karl, Kirkpatrick Charles James
Institut für Pathologie, Universitätsmedizin Mainz, Johannes-Gutenberg Universität Mainz, Germany.
Handb Exp Pharmacol. 2012(208):469-91. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-23274-9_20.
The biological role of acetylcholine and the cholinergic system is revisited based particularly on scientific research early and late in the last century. On the one hand, acetylcholine represents the classical neurotransmitter, whereas on the other hand, acetylcholine and the pivotal components of the cholinergic system (high-affinity choline uptake, choline acetyltransferase and its end product acetylcholine, muscarinic and nicotinic receptors and esterase) are expressed by more or less all mammalian cells, i.e. by the majority of cells not innervated by neurons at all. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that acetylcholine and "cholinergic receptors" are expressed in non-neuronal organisms such as plants and protists. Acetylcholine is even synthesized by bacteria and algae representing an extremely old signalling molecule on the evolutionary timescale. The following article summarizes examples, in which non-neuronal acetylcholine is released from primitive organisms as well as from mammalian non-neuronal cells and binds to muscarinic receptors to modulate/regulate phenotypic cell functions via auto-/paracrine pathways. The examples demonstrate that non-neuronal acetylcholine and the non-neuronal cholinergic system are vital for various types of cells such as epithelial, endothelial and immune cells.
基于上世纪早期和晚期的科学研究，人们对乙酰胆碱和胆碱能系统的生物学作用进行了重新审视。一方面，乙酰胆碱是经典的神经递质；另一方面，乙酰胆碱和胆碱能系统的关键成分（高亲和力胆碱摄取、胆碱乙酰转移酶及其终产物乙酰胆碱、毒蕈碱和烟碱受体以及酯酶）或多或少在所有哺乳动物细胞中都有表达，也就是说，在大多数根本没有神经元支配的细胞中也有表达。此外，已经证明乙酰胆碱和“胆碱能受体”在植物和原生生物等非神经元生物体中也有表达。乙酰胆碱甚至由细菌和藻类合成，在进化时间尺度上它是一种极其古老的信号分子。以下文章总结了一些例子，其中非神经元乙酰胆碱从原始生物体以及哺乳动物非神经元细胞中释放出来，并与毒蕈碱受体结合，通过自分泌/旁分泌途径调节表型细胞功能。这些例子表明，非神经元乙酰胆碱和非神经元胆碱能系统对上皮细胞、内皮细胞和免疫细胞等各种类型的细胞至关重要。
