There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.
Abstract
Different methods to measure the unstable radical nitric oxide (NO) have been established.
We are going to present a new method to measure intracellular calcium and NO simultaneously
in endothelial cells. A new fluorescent dye (DAF-2) has been developed recently which
binds NO resulting in an enhanced fluorescence. We loaded porcine aortic endothelial
cells with Fura-2, a fluorescent dye commonly used to measure intracellular calcium,
and DAF-2 simultaneously (cell permeable dyes). Using excitation wavelengths of lambda
340 nm (Fura-2) and lambda 485 nm (DAF-2) we could show that thrombin induces an intracellular
calcium increase and simultaneously a NO formation in endothelial cells which could
be blocked by a NO synthase inhibitor. This new method of a simultaneous measurement
of intracellular calcium and NO provides the possibility to follow intracellular calcium
and NO distributions online, and is sensitive enough to monitor changes of NO formed
by the constitutive endothelial NO-synthase.