What are the Catecholamines? | Dopamine, Norepinephrine, Epinephrine | Physiology and Main Functions

The 3 catecholamines are Dopamine, Norepinephrine, and Epinephrine.

The process for synthesizing catecholamines is:

Digest a protein source containing phenylalanine (an essential amino acid)

Phenylalanine ➡️ Tyrosine (a nonessential amino acid)

Tyrosine ➡️ L DOPA (aka levodopa)

Levodopa ➡️ Dopamine

Dopamine ➡️ Norepinephrine

Norepinephrine ➡️ Epinephrine

What does Dopamine do?

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain

Dopamine is involved in reward/ motivation pathways as well as the motor control pathways.

Dopamine is known for it’s role in Parkinson’s disease.

When dopamine producing neurons in the substantial migration die off Parkinson’s disease can result in slowness, rigidity, tremors, and decreased motor control.

Parkinson’s Disease is treated with Levadopa which should make sense since we talked about how it is the precursor to dopamine.

What do epinephrine and norepinephrine do?

Increase blood pressure

Increase muscle contractions via increased calcium release

Increase energy availability

Increase testosterone, growth hormone, IGF-1

Increase vasodilation

Where are the catecholamines synthesized?

The Adrenal Medulla

00:27 Bioenergetic pathway of synthesizing catecholamines
00:46 Phenylalanine
00:48 Tyrosine
00:55 Levadopa
01:15 Catecholamines Epinephrine, Norepinephrine, Dopamine
01:50 Functions of Dopamine
02:12 Role of Dopamine in Parkinson’s Disease
02:34 Functions of Epinephrine and Norepinephrine
03:30 Smash the like button

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