Potassium Ion Channels

For this article, author Jennifer Fisher Wilson interviewed Roderick MacKinnon, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and head of the Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology and Biophysics at Rockefeller University, coauthor of this Science paper. Data from the Web of Science (ISI, Philadelphia) show that this paper has been cited more frequently than others of the same type and vintage. D.A. Doyle, J.M. Cabral, R.A. Pfuetzner, A.L. Kuo, J.M. Gulbis, S.L. Cohen, B.T. Chait, R. MacKinnon, "The structure of the potassium channel: molecular basis of K+ conduction and selectivity," Science, 280:69-77, April 3, 1998. (Cited in about 385 papers since publication) Potassium channels have long been known to underlie the nervous system's electrical signals, controlling the pace of the heart, the release of hormones into the bloodstream, and many other cellular processes. As a young researcher, Roderick MacKinnon mutated ion channel genes to test gating and selectivity mechanisms using electrical measurements. These ...