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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1975 May;72(5):1661–1665. doi: 10.1073/pnas.72.5.1661

Regulation of sensitivity to beta-adrenergic stimulation in induction of pineal N-acetyltransferase.

J A Romero, J Axelrod
PMCID: PMC432603  PMID: 168570

Abstract

Stimulation by isoproterenol causes large increases in the activity of rat pineal N-acetyltransferase (arylamine acetyltransferase or acetyl-CoA:arylamine N-acetyltransferase, EC 2.3.1.5) after a variable lag period. Lengthening periods of exposure to light cause rapid increases in the sensitivity of pineal N-acetyltransferase to induction by isoproterenol. This supersensitivity, which develops gradually over a 12 hr period, is correlated with increasingly longer lag periods in the induction of the enzyme, and with progressively greater maximal response. Repeated administration of isoproterenol to supersensitive animals rapidly reverses the above changes and causes relative subsensitivity. The sensitivity of N-acetyltransferase to induction by dibutyryl-cyclic tamp added to pineals in organ culture was found to change in parallel with the sensitivity to isoproterenol. Stimulation of cyclic AMP levels in the pineal by isoproterenol was also greater in supersensitive rats than in the subsensitive animals, whether the supersensitivity had been caused by denervation or by exposure to light for 12 hr. The above experiments suggest that there are two sites for the regulation of the sensitivity of N-acetyltransferase to induction by catecholamines. The first site regulates the capacity of intracellular processes (i.e., induction of tn-acetyltransferase) to respond to cyclic AMP as a second messenger.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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