Ever wonder what’s going on when you get itchy skin, whether from a rash or medication or some other bodily reaction? And why do some strong anti-itching medications make us nauseous, dry-mouthed zombies? Scientists at the UNC School of Medicine and the University of California at San Francisco conducted research showing in precise detail how chemicals bind to mast cells to cause itch, and the scientists figured out the detailed structure of receptor proteins on the surface of these cells when a compound is bound to those proteins.
This work, published in Nature, was led by the labs of Bryan L. Roth, MD, PhD and Jonathan Fay, PhD at UNC-Chapel Hill, and Brian Shoichet, PhD, at UC San Francisco, co-senior authors who have collaborated on previous studies of important cell receptors – protein complexes that chemicals (including drugs) bind to cause or stop a reaction inside cells.