| Affiliation: | (1) Departamento de Bioquímica, Instituto de Ciências Básicas da Saúde, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil;(2) Departamento de Ciências Fisiológicas, Faculdade de Biociências, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil;(3) Departamento de Ciências Fisiológicas—Faculdade de Biociências, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Avenida Ipiranga 6681, 90619-900 Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil |
| Abstract: | Studies demonstrated that endogenous levels of estrogen affect the long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD). ATP and adenosine may play a role in the modulation of LTP. Our laboratory observed in previous studies that inhibitory avoidance task is associated with a decrease in hippocampal ectonucleotidase activities in adult male rats. To explore if ectonucleotidases are modulated in memory formation in female rats, as observed in males, we evaluated the effect of inhibitory avoidance training on synaptosomal NTP Dase and 5 -nucleotidase activities in rat hippocampus from both sexes. The results demonstrated a decrease in ATP, ADP and AMP hydrolysis (37%, 38% and 32%, respectively) immediately after training and a significant inhibition only in ATP hydrolysis (36%) 30 min post-training in male rats. There were no changes in ectonucleotidase activities from female rats. These findings provide support for the view that could exist biochemical differences in ectonucleotidase activities between males and females. |
