Pharmacological Modulation of Cellular Signaling

Tetrodotoxin (TTX) and flupenthixol were purchased from Tocris Bioscience (Bristol, UK), flavopiridol was from Selleckchem (Houston, TX, USA), and all other chemicals were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich (St. Louis, MI, USA). Peptides were synthesized by Biomatik (Wilmington, DE, USA). DA was made fresh every 30 min to minimize oxidation. Antagonists were administered 10 min before DA application. Concentrations of flavopiridol (100 nM) and 5,6-dichloro-1-β-D-ribobenzimidazole (DRB, 100 μM) were chosen based on previously demonstrated effective dosages (Chao and Price, 2001 (link); Bensaude, 2011 (link); Yuan and Burrell, 2013 (link); Krenz et al., 2014 (link)).