Merck Millipore OT Oxytocin Receptor Membrane Preparation

Oxytocin is a cyclic 9 amino acid peptide that differs from vasopressin in 2 amino acids. Despite the close similarities in sequence, oxytocin and vasopressin have different biological activities and bind to distinct G protein-coupled receptors. The oxytocin receptor, OT, couples primarily to Gq/11 to mobilize intracellular calcium. In female reproduction, oxytocin promotes uterine contraction and lactation; oxytocin is the most commonly used drug for induction of labor, whereas an oxytocin antagonist, atosiban, is under investigation to suppress preterm labor. Oxytocin/OT interaction in the CNS also plays an important role in stress, male and female sexual response, and sociality (Gimpl and Fahrenholz, 2001). Chemicon's oxytocin membrane preparations are crude membrane preparations made from our proprietary stable recombinant cell lines to ensure high-level of GPCR surface expression; thus, they are ideal HTS tools for screening of antagonists of oxytocin receptor interactions with oxytocin. The membrane preparations exhibit a Kd of 0.53nM for [125I]-OVTA. With 5.0 ug/well Oxytocin Membrane Prep and 0.5 nM [125I]-OVTA, a greater than 6-fold signal-to-background ratio was obtained.