TABLE 2

Responses to agonists

Agonist-evoked responses in oocytes injected with wild-type or human nAChR subunits are shown for several agonists (mean ± S.E.M.).

Oocytes were injected with α7 subunits alone, or with α7 and β2 subunits at a 1:1 ratio. n refers to number of oocytes. Normalized I_max for α7β2 was calculated for a compound by dividing the mean maximum current (I_max) recorded from oocytes expressing α7β2 by the I_max of cells expressing α7 receptors exposed to the same compound. Likewise, I_max for α7-expressing cells was divided by itself, such that the normalized I_max = 1 for each compound.

Agonist and Subunit(s)		Normalized I_max			EC₅₀
Agonist and Subunit(s)	n	Mean	S.E.M.	p	Mean^{^b}	S.E.M.^{^b}	p
					μM	μM
Acetylcholine (1280 μM^{^a})
α7	6	1.00	1.22	0.72	140.67	7.22	0.87
α7β2	7	0.86	0.75		136.71	5.82
Choline (19 mM^{^a})
α7	16	1.00	0.13	0.02	0.83	0.05	<0.01
α7β2	12	0.55	0.05		1.19	0.07
Carbachol (3200 μM^{^a})
α7	13	1.00	0.46	0.04	339.69	6.77	0.57
α7β2	21	0.63	0.12		361.76	6.40
Epibatidine (10 μM^{^a})
α7	9	1.00	0.15	0.002	1.17	0.18	0.01
α7β2	8	0.47	0.20		2.25	0.27
PNU-282987 (40 μM^{^a})
α7	7	1.00	0.17	0.17	2.11	0.12	<0.001
α7β2	6	1.12	0.31		4.37	0.21

↵^a Agonist concentrations used to measure I_max.
↵^b Choline is in units of mM; all other agonists are in units of μM.