Propofol is the most widely used injectable general anesthetic. Its targets include ligand-
gated ion channels such as the GABA A receptor, but such receptor-channel complexes
remain challenging to study at atomic resolution. Until structural biology methods advance to
the point of being able to deal with systems such as the GABA A receptor, it will be
necessary to use more tractable surrogates to probe the molecular details of anesthetic
recognition. We have previously shown that recognition of inhalational general anesthetics …