Abstract— Cis‐4‐aminocrotonic acid, an analogue of GABA in a folded conformation, appears not to act as a GABA analogue with respect to bicuculline‐sensitive postsynaptic receptors, ‘high affinity’ GABA uptake and GABA: 2‐oxoglutarate aminotransferase in the mammalian central nervous system. On the other hand, trans‐4‐aminocrotonic acid, an analogue of GABA in an extended conformation, acts as efficiently as GABA with respect to each of the above systems, indicating that extended rather than folded conformations of GABA are likely to be important in the interaction of GABA with the specific macromolecules concerned.

—Microelectrophoretic methods were used to study the effects on spinal neurones of a series of conformationally restricted analogues of GABA, most of which are structurally related to musci‐mol (3‐hydroxy‐5‐aminomethylisoxazole). 3‐Hydroxy‐5‐(l‐aminoethyl)isoxazole and 3‐hydroxy‐5‐(2‐aminoethyl)isoxazole were GABA‐like depressants comparable in effectiveness with GABA. The inhibitors of GABA uptake 4,5,6,7‐tetrahydroisoxazolo[4,5‐c]pyridin‐3‐ol and nipecotic acid (piperidine‐3‐carboxylic acid) reversibly enhanced the depressant action of GABA. 3‐Hydroxy‐5‐dimethylaminomethly‐isoxazole, 5,6,7,8‐tetrahydro‐4H‐isoxazolo[4,5‐d]azepm‐3‐ol, 4,5,6,7‐tetrahydroisoxazolo[4,5‐c]pyridin‐3‐ol, and nipecotic acid reversibly antagonized the postsynaptic action of glycine. A structure‐activity correlation was made in an indirect attempt to elucidate some comformational requirements for interaction of GABA with its postsynaptic receptor and the binding site of its uptake system. The results seem to indicate that different conformations of GABA are required for these interactions.

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In cats anaesthetised with pentobarbitone, the effect of inhibitors of the in vitro cellular uptake of GABA were tested on the responses of single central neurones to GABA and other depressant amino acids. (4)- AND (-)-nepecotic acid, (4)-2,4-diaminobutyric acid (DABA) and 2,2-dimethyl-beta-alanine, enhanced the action of GABA on spinal, cerebellar and cerebral cortical neurones. In the spinal cord DABA, and to a less estent (-)-nipecotic acid, enhanced the action of beta-alanine, whereas the actions of glycine and taurine were unaffected by DABA and reduced by (-)-nipecotic acid. In the cerebellum and cerebral cortex, these two substances enhanced the action of GABA, usually to a greater extent than that of beta-alanine and taurine, although this specificity was not marked. The GABA-mediated basket cell inhibition of Purkinje cells in the cerebellum was unaffected by DABA and (-)-nipecotic acid, and neither substance appears suitable for determining the role of uptake processes in the inactivation of synapitcally released GABA. Quantitatively these in vivo results agree more closely with recent vitro uptake studies in cat tissue than the previously published data on rat cerebral cortex and dorsal root ganglia, and the observations provide further evidence for the importance of cellular uptake in maintaining low extraneuronal concentrations of inhibitory amino acid transmitters.

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