Biased activity of soluble guanylyl cyclase: the Janus face of thymoquinone

This review focuses on the vascular pharmacology of the natural compound thymoquinone. Thymoquinone causes both endothelium-independent dilatations of rat arteries, and endothelium-dependent augmentations of contraction in rat and pig arteries. These augmentations counterintuitively depend on biased activity of sGC, producing cyclic IMP rather than cyclic GMP.137