Paddle Power: Surprising shape of key cellular pore unveiled
By John Travis
Underlying every thought and bodily motion are nerve and muscle cells sending or receiving electrical signals. Driving this activity are voltage-gated ion channels–pores that quickly open or close to various ions depending on the electrical properties of the cell’s membrane.
A research team has now obtained the first atomic-scale portrait of one of these crucial gatekeepers, a voltage-dependent potassium channel. “It looks very different than any of us expected,” says team leader Roderick MacKinnon, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator at Rockefeller University in New York