Opening Potassium Channels to Scrutiny

Crystal structure of "open" K+ channel leads to new ideas on how it works.

Voltage-gated potassium (Kv) channels play an important role in modulating the electrical activity of cells, opening in response to changes in membrane voltage and allowing potassium ions to escape. Hodgkin and Huxley laid out a model in 1952 for what voltage-gated channels might be doing, but their structure remained a mystery for decades. In 2003, Roderick MacKinnon's group at Rockefeller University solved one structure of a bacterial Kv homolog, KvAP,1 but the results didn't fit predictions from previous experiments. "The world stood in consternation because the structure didn't look at all like what people had anticipated," says Benoit Roux from the University of Chicago, who was not involved in MacKinnon's findings.


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