麻酔と植物─麻酔分子はなぜ外界への応答を失わせるのか?

抄録

Anesthesia was firstly discovered in the 19th century and has been essential for many medical treatments such as surgery. Nevertheless, the action of anesthetics on nerve cells how the drugs induce the state of unconsciousness remains largely unclear. One of the big mysteries is that many anesthetic molecules share no or little similarities in atoms and structures. Even chemically-inert xenon gas is known to be an excellent anesthetic. It makes the study of anesthetics challenging to find out the target of the drug molecules in the biological systems. Besides animals, narcotic drugs have a broad effect on living organisms, including plants. French physiologist Claude Bernard performed the immobilization of the mimosa plant with diethyl ether anesthesia in the late 19th century. I reproduced the experiments of Bernard and tried to see what happens in living plant cells under anesthesia using current research techniques. Here I would like to introduce my results and discuss the possible action of anesthetics.