Cat heart acetylcholine: Unilateral vagotomy studies with pyrolysis-mass fragmentography

The distribution of acetylcholine (ACh) in the cat heart was investigated by pyrolysis-gas chromatography (PGC) and pyrolysis-mass fragmentography (PMF) techniques. The hearts were dissected into various regions and homogenized in the presence of butyrycholine (or propionylcholine) as internal standard. The choline esters were isolated and analyzed by PGC or by PMF (at m/e 58). A pattern of distribution for ACh was found to be the same as I have previously described (1,2). Some cats were subjected to either a right or a left unilateral cervical vagotomy 4 weeks before removal and analysis of heart tissue. Hearts from unilateral (right or left) vagotomized cats did not differ from controls in the ACh content of any heart area examined. These results are consistent with the idea that intact parasympathetic neurons may compensate for the denervation following unilateral vagotomy.     

Design and optimization of selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors with high synthetic accessibility Part 1

The reported selective serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitor Litoxetine was used as the starting point in the design of a range of potential SSRIs with high ease of synthetic accessibility. Preparation and subsequent optimization yielded a range of potent and highly selective SSRIs.     

Phylogenetic comparative analysis of RNA structure on Macintosh computers

A Macintosh Hypertalk program (Hypercard ‘stack’)for use in phylogenetic comparative analysis of RNA structureis described. The program identifies covariations and compensatorychanges in RNA sequence alignments, for use in the constructionof secondary structure models or the identification of tertiaryinteractions. The results of an analysis are presented eitheras a list of positions in the alignment which covary, or asa 2-dimensional matrix in which potential helices in the secondarystructure appear as diagonal patterns. Received on January 7, 1991; accepted on March 19, 1991