Ion Channel Surprises

Ion Channel Surprises Prokaryotes Do It Again!

pessimist that the party is over—that no additional famiJust 5 years ago, the prospect of obtaining high-resolulies of familiar ion channels will present themselves in tion structures of neurobiologically interesting ion chanprokaryotic genomes. But a recent report from a collabnels by x-ray crystallography seemed very dim indeed. orative effort of the Gouaux and Mayer groups (Chen Except for t...

Ion channel activity drives ion channel expression.

Ion permeation through neuronal nAChR ion channel

Alzheimer’s dementia is related to loss of inter-neuron communication by nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChR) at post synaptic neurons, and successful therapy approaches rely e.g. on modulations of response signals initiated by ion flux through the receptor integrated ion channel. We have evaluated Umbrella Sampling (US) and Steered Molecular Dynamics (SMD) pulling for calculation of the p...

Ion Channel-Target Toxicology

The saying " use poison as an antidote to poison " has long been considered the spirit of traditional Chinese medicine and herbalism since Ming Dynasty and has indicated the medical values of toxins arising from venomous animals, plants, microbes, or synthetic chemicals. A well-known physician Sir P. M. Latham (1789–1875) once defined the relationship between poisons and medicines as " oftentim...

Capturing Ion Channel Gating

This is a golden age for ion channels: a time when chemistry, molecular biology, and electrophysiology have come together with structural biology to provide glimpses into some truly amazing membrane proteins. And yet, as usual, the answers yield more questions. Is a new structure the structure of an open channel or of a closed one? How does the voltage sensor actually move? Though providing ama...