Summary: The Effect Of Alcohol On Living Organisms

Alcohol is something that most people have experienced in their teenage years or adult life, and with that they would have also learned about some of the effects that it had on the body. Alcohol targets the central nervous system (CNS) which it why when a lot is consumed subjects reflexes become slower their speech can be slurred and their coordination is off. If very large quantities are consumed the subject could have more severe conditions occur which can result in a coma, respiratory failure or even death. The question is why does alcohol have this effect on living organisms. There are obviously many different factors that alcohol is able to disrupt in the body, but one of the major processes that it affects is the GABAA receptor which

In order to understand how alcohol affects the the CNS we need to understand a little more about the GABAA receptor. The GABAA receptor is found at the postsynaptic dendrite which is the area of a nerve cell that receives chemical signals from its neighboring nerve cell. There is a whole network of nerves throughout the human body which are responsible for sending chemical signals to the brain. To do this they require ion channels that allow the passage of positive and negative ions into the nerve cell. These channels are made from integral membrane proteins that form a porin complex allowing a certain type of ion into the cell. The GABAA receptor is a ligand-gated channel which is made of five proteins, or subunits, called alpha, beta and gamma. This channel is responsible for the passive transportation of negatively charged chlorine ions

However a large consumption of alcohol could lead to lethal results. People should also be aware of the long-term use of alcohol as it can cause problems for people. It has been shown in studies that a long-term exposure of ethanol to the GABAA receptor will cause it to change its shape to accommodate the constant presence of alcohol. The change in shape acts as a trade off because it makes it harder for GABA to bind while still allowing alcohol to bind with it. This causes the inhibitory effect to be relatively at the normal range. This is why when people drink a lot they are able to tolerate more alcohol. How ever if the body becomes accustom to having alcohol always in its system then when that presence is taken away there will become an imbalance of inhibitory and excitatory neurotransmitters again however this time there will be to much excitability in the cell which can cause withdrawal symptoms like