The effects of nitric oxide on long-term potentiation at the crayfish neuromuscular junction

Abstract

Nitric oxide (NO) has been discovered to function as a novel inter- and intracellular messengerincluding as a neurotransmitter (Miller, 1993). In this study, we observed the effects of NO on long-term potentiation (LTP) in the crayfish neuromuscular junction (NMJ) by increasing the amount of free NO in the crayfish Ringer solution through the addition of the NO donor DEANO. Previous studies such as Gainey et al. (2003), Baxter et al. (2005), and Boehning et al. (2003) indicate that NO may cause LTP in the crayfish NMJ. Though we hypothesized that exposing the crayfish NMJ to NO would initiate LTP, our results do not indicate that this is the case. Our results do allude to NO, increasing post-tetanic potentiation (PTP). However, none of our results means were significant at the 0.05 level (Students T-test), therefore we cannot conclude that the addition of NO through DEANO affects potentiation in the crayfish NMJ.