Time and Voltage-Dependent Slowing in the Off Gating Currents from Kv3.1

Gating of the Bacterial Sodium Channel, NaChBac: Voltage-dependent Charge Movement and Gating Currents

The bacterial sodium channel, NaChBac, from Bacillus halodurans provides an excellent model to study structure–function relationships of voltage-gated ion channels. It can be expressed in mammalian cells for functional studies as well as in bacterial cultures as starting material for protein purification for fine biochemical and biophysical studies. Macroscopic functional properties of NaChBac ...

Coupling of Voltage-dependent Gating

I N T R O D U C T I O N Many K§ channels are inhibited by Ba ions. In the cases for which careful mechanistic studies have been carr ied out (Armstrong and Taylor , 1980; Eaton and Brodwick, 1980; Armst rong et al., 1982; Vergara and Latorre , 1983), the evidence argues that the Ba ion acts via a simple blocking scheme; it enters the conduct ion pathway o f the K § channel, where it binds tight...

Voltage-dependent ion channels and their gating.

Voltage-dependent membrane capacitance in rat pituitary nerve terminals due to gating currents.

We investigated the voltage dependence of membrane capacitance of pituitary nerve terminals in the whole-terminal patch-clamp configuration using a lock-in amplifier. Under conditions where secretion was abolished and voltage-gated channels were blocked or completely inactivated, changes in membrane potential still produced capacitance changes. In terminals with significant sodium currents, the...

Voltage-Dependent Gating in a “Voltage Sensor-Less” Ion Channel

The voltage sensitivity of voltage-gated cation channels is primarily attributed to conformational changes of a four transmembrane segment voltage-sensing domain, conserved across many levels of biological complexity. We have identified a remarkable point mutation that confers significant voltage dependence to Kir6.2, a ligand-gated channel that lacks any canonical voltage-sensing domain. Simil...