Figure 6.
Quantitative immunoprecipitation of cortical-epibatidine binding sites with nAChR subunit-specific antibodies indicates a preferential recovery of α5 containing nAChRs in tr(CT) mice. (a) Cortical [3H]-epibatidine binding in wild type (WT), heterozygous (HET), β2 knockout (KO) and tr(CT) mice indicates partial recovery of binding in the tr(CT) line relative to KO. (b) Immunoprecipitation of a panel of nAChR subunits from cortical samples of each genotype expressed as femtomoles of immunoprecipitated [3H]-epibatidine-labeled nAChR per milligram of protein. Antibodies raised against the cytoplasmic loop of the rat (cytR), carboxyl terminal region of the rat (coohR) and cytoplasmic loop of the mouse (cytM) α5 nAChR subunit were used. (c) Immunoprecipitation results expressed with β2 subunit levels taken as 100%. (d) Immunoprecipitation results expressed with β2 subunit levels taken as 100% and with data from the three α5 subunit antibodies combined, which indicates a significantly (**p<0.001) higher proportion of β2* nAChRs in the tr(CT) cortex also contain the α5 subunit relative to the other genotypes.