Welcome. My name is Devine. This is episode 472 of the Devine

intervention podcasts. In this podcast, we're going to be continuing with our

review of the adrenergic receptors. We're going to spend time today on the

Alpha 2 receptors. So let's just get

right into it. So the thing is, as I mentioned earlier on, all the

adroenergic receptors are gee protein coupled receptors.

In the case of the alpha two receptors, they are inhibitory g protein couple receptors. So basically what do they do? They essentially decrease the activity of adenilate cyclase. If you decrease the activity of adenilate cyclase because you're inhibitory, you will have less conversion of ATP to cyclic AMP.

And with less cyclic AMP being made, you will have less activation of protein kinase A. If you have less activation of protein

kinase A then obviously that probably tells you that oh I'm going to have less

phosphorylation. So the alpha-2 receptor when you take something that activates it,

you're going to have on the whole net, like a net decrease in phosphorylation. So for example, things like that depend on phosphorylation

like glycogen phosphoryles. Likogen phosphoryles is an enzyme that helps you break down

glycogen. It's not going to be activated because glycogen

phosphorylase is active when phosphorylated, but here it's not going to be activated.

So since it's not going to be activated, it's not going to work as well. So you're not going to have a breakdown of glycogen.

Okay? Just the thing is if you just understand this concept of less phosphorylation, it can help you

predict many things in biochemistry.

Biochemistry is one of these things, as you've probably seen from my biochem videos

where it's based on rules. If you understand the rules, you understand the

principles, there are many things that people memorize that you can very easily predict.

Like you can on your own literally build out the different biochemical actions of the Alpha 2

receptor.

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