Article A Molecular Target for an Alcohol Chain-Length Cutoff Hae-Won Chung 1,2,†, E. Nicholas Petersen 1,2,†, Cerrone Cabanos 1,2, Keith R. Murphy 2,3,4, Mahmud Arif Pavel 1,2, Andrew S. Hansen 5, William W. Ja 2,3 and Scott B. Hansen 1,2 1 - Department of Molecular Medicine, The Scripps Research Institute, Jupiter, FL 33458, USA 2 - Department of Neuroscience, The Scripps Research Institute, Jupiter, FL 33458, USA 3 - Center on Aging, The Scripps Research Institute, Jupiter, FL 33458, USA 4 - Program in Integrative Biology and Neuroscience, Florida Atlantic University, Jupiter, FL 33458, USA 5 - HBBiotech, BioInnovations Gateway, Salt Lake City, UT 84115, USA Correspondence to Scott B. Hansen: Department of Molecular Medicine, The Scripps Research Institute, Jupiter, FL 33458, USA.
[email protected] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmb.2018.11.028 Edited by Daniel L. Minor Abstract Despite the widespread consumption of ethanol, mechanisms underlying its anesthetic effects remain uncertain. n-Alcohols induce anesthesia up to a specific chain length and then lose potency—an observation known as the “chain-length cutoff effect.” This cutoff effect is thought to be mediated by alcohol binding sites on proteins such as ion channels, but where these sites are for long-chain alcohols and how they mediate a cutoff remain poorly defined. In animals, the enzyme phospholipase D (PLD) has been shown to generate alcohol metabolites (e.g., phosphatidylethanol) with a cutoff, but no phenotype has been shown connecting PLD to an anesthetic effect. Here we show loss of PLD blocks ethanol-mediated hyperactivity in Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly), demonstrating that PLD mediates behavioral responses to alcohol in vivo.