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35 years of channelling potassium ions

In 1987, two independent groups cloned a gene that encoded the potassium-ion-channel protein Shaker, enabling functional and structural studies that have transformed ion-channel research.
  1. Crina M. Nimigean

    1. Crina M. Nimigean is in the Department of Anesthesiology and in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, New York 10021, USA.

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Nerve impulses travel through cells as trains of electrical signals called action potentials, which arise from fast changes in voltage when ions move across the neuronal membrane. The membrane-spanning ion-channel proteins that mediate this process have fascinated scientists for more than half a century, since their existence was first proposed. The channels not only select for their preferred ion type — sodium (Na+), calcium (Ca2+) or potassium (K+) — but also sense changes in transmembrane voltage and respond by regulating the flow of ions through their pores. In 1987, a group headed by Mark Tanouye1, and another led by partners Lily and Yuh-Nung Jan2,3, took a key step towards understanding voltage-gated ion channels, identifying the first gene that encoded a K+ channel. Their work opened the door to a tsunami of investigations, eventually leading to the determination of high-resolution structures for a wealth of K+ channels.

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Nature 608, 670-672 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-02163-3

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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