Studies of the in vitro effect of methylmercury chloride on rat brain neurotransmitter enzymes

The in vitro effect of methylmercury (MM) on the enzymatic activities of brain cell specific marker enzymes, choline acetyltransferase (CAT), glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD), 2',3'-cyclic nucleotide phosphohydrolase (CNP), glutamine synthetase (GS) and enolase was examined. The results demonstrate that at 100 microM MM, GS activity was not affected whereas a small decrease in the activity of both GAD (20%) and enolase (10%) was observed. CNP and CAT activity appeared to be more sensitive toward MM with 100 microM MM producing inhibition of 50% and 30%, respectively. The addition of sulfhydryl protecting reagents such as DTT or sodium thioglycolate can restore the enzyme activities to normal control levels despite prior exposure of the enzymes to MM.