Alteration of cardiovascular and neuronal function in M-1 knockout mice

We used gene targeting to generate mice lacking the M, muscarinic acetylcho line receptor. These mice exhibit a decreased susceptibility to pilocarpine -induced seizures, loss of regulation of M-current potassium channel activi ty and of a specific calcium channel pathway in sympathetic neurons, a loss of the positive chronotropic acid inotropic responses to the novel muscari nic agonist McN-A-343, and impaired learning in a hippocampal-dependent tes t of spatial memory. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.