Anesthesiology
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The mechanisms by which general anesthetics, including xenon and nitrous oxide, act are only beginning to be discovered. However, structural approaches revealed weak but specific protein-gas interactions. ⋯ These data demonstrate that xenon and nitrous oxide obey different binding mechanisms, a finding that argues against all unitary hypotheses of narcosis and anesthesia, and indicate that the Meyer-Overton rule of a high correlation between anesthetic potency and solubility in lipids of general anesthetics is often overinterpreted. This study provides evidence that the mechanisms of gas binding to proteins and therefore of general anesthesia should be considered as the result of a fully reversible interaction between a drug ligand and a receptor as this occurs in classical pharmacology.