Mike May | Aug 24, 2003 | 7 min read
Courtesy of Roderick MacKinnon, Rockefeller University Playing gatekeeper to human health, channel proteins penetrate all cell membranes. In the nervous system, armies of channels open and close in precise order to create action potentials, the brief membrane depolarizations that act as the primary form of electrical signaling in animals. These action potentials prove so enduring, functioning properly even in extreme experimental preparations, that investigators might consider ion channels in