Study on the technology of nitric oxide (NO) detection in vitro and in vivo

Issue title: Selected Proceedings of the 6th Asian Congress for Mirocirculation (ACM'05) (Tokyo, February 25 and 26, 2005)

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Zheng, Xiaoxiang | Ning, Gangmin | Yang, Yong

Affiliations: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Key Laboratory of Biomedical Engineering of Ministry of Education, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China

Note: [] Corresponding author. E-mail: zxx@mail.bme.zju.edu.cn.

Abstract: To reveal the intracellular distribution of nitric oxide (NO) in single cell and to detect NO quantitatively in animal models, various methods are developed. A confocal microscope and 3D visualization technique were applied to visualize NO concentration in arbitrary directions and in different sections of cells. It was shown that NO distributions in cultured neurons of rat hipopocampus were not homogeneous. A kind of highly sensitive and selective NO electrode was utilized to measure the NO concentration in SD rat hippocampus, simultaneously with blood pressure and ECG recording. By the administration of NG-nitro-L-arginine methylester (L-NAME), the changes of NO level in the hippocampus in vivo were detected. It was shown that the NO level decreased greatly when NOS was inhibited by L-NAME with significant increase in blood pressure. The developed methods may be helpful to investigate the physiological mechanism of NO and its role in pathology.

Keywords: NO detection, confocal microscope, NO electrode

Journal: Clinical Hemorheology and Microcirculation, vol. 34, no. 1-2, pp. 347-352, 2006