Nitric oxide signaling pathways at neural level in invertebrates: functional implications in cnidarians.
Nitric oxide (NO) is a small molecule with unconventional properties. It is found in organisms throughout the phylogenetic scale, from fungi to mammals, in which it acts as an intercellular messenger of main physiological events, or even as an intracellular messenger in invertebrates. In both vertebrates and invertebrates, NO is involved in many processes, regulated in part by cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP), and reacts with different oxygen molecular species. The presence of NO in the early-diverging metazoan phylum of Cnidaria, of which Hydra represents the first known species having a nervous system, supports a role of this molecule as an ancestral neural messenger with physiological roles that remain to be largely elucidated. Therefore, our novel findings on the presence of NO in Hydra are here integrated in such a comparative frame.
Istituto di Cibernetica Eduardo Caianiello del CNR, Via Campi Flegrei 34, I-80078 Pozzuoli (Napoli), Italy.
Luigia
L
Cristino
Vittorio
V
Guglielmotti
Antonio
A
Cotugno
Carlo
C
Musio
Silvia
S
Santillo
D000818:Animals; D002450:Cell Communication / Q000502:physiology; D003063:Cnidaria / Q000166:cytology / Q000378:metabolism*; D006152:Cyclic GMP / Q000378:metabolism; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D006829:Hydra / Q000166:cytology / Q000378:metabolism; D007448:Invertebrates / Q000166:cytology / Q000378:metabolism*; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000166:cytology / Q000378:metabolism; D009420:Nervous System / Q000166:cytology / Q000378:metabolism*; D009569:Nitric Oxide / Q000378:metabolism*; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000502:physiology*
D009569:Nitric Oxide; D006152:Cyclic GMP