A Less Flexible BK Channel Opens More Easily

A Less Flexible BK Channel Opens More Easily

BK potassium channels regulate spike width and firing rate. A BK point mutation in humans enhances channel activity, leading to epilepsy. In this issue of Neuron, Yang and colleagues use this mutation to demonstrate that channel opening is determined by the flexibility of a region that contains a Ca(2+)-binding site.

The new stability and growth pact : More flexible , less stupid ?

Less is more… (more or less…).

In April 1981 Xerox introduced the Star 8010 workstation, the first commercial system with a Graphical User Interface (GUI) and the first to use the “desktop” metaphor to organize a user’s interactions with the computer. Despite the perception of huge progress, from the perspective of design and usage models, there has been precious little progress in the intervening years. In the tradition of ...

BK Channel News

The large conductance Ca 2 -activated K channel (BK Ca ) is well positioned to assume diverse physiological functions because it is ubiquitously expressed in many cell types. Some of the functions recently proposed for this channel offer unexpected surprises, however, such as a role in innate immunity in neutrophil leukocytes (Ahluwalia et al., 2004), recognition as a heme-binding protein (Tang...

Less Is More, More the Merrier, or More From Less?

P hysicians deal with uncertainty all the time and chest pain in the emergency department (ED) is a typical example. Traditionally, coronary artery disease (CAD), pulmonary embolism (PE), and aortic dissection can present as chest pain, and the consequences of a missed diagnosis can be devastating, with the potential for rapid deterioration, and serious risk of morbidity and mortality. Moreover...