Nature 365, 445 - 448 (30 September 1993); doi:10.1038/365445a0

Ether-à-go-go encodes a voltage-gated channel permeable to K⁺ and Ca²⁺ and modulated by cAMP

Andrea Brüggemann^*†, Luis A. Pardo^*‡, Walter Stühmer^*§ & Olaf Pongs^†

^*Max-Planck-lnstitut fur experimentelle Medizin, Hermann-Rein-Strasse 3, D-37075 Gottingen, Germany
^†ZMNH, Institut fur Neuronale Signalverarbeitung, Martinistrasse 52, D-20246 Hamburg, Germany
^‡Departamento de Biologia Funcional, Universidad de Oviedo, E-33006 Oviedo, Spain
^§To whom correspondence should be addressed.

THE Drosophila ether-à-go-go (eag) mutant is responsible for altered potassium currents in excitable tissue¹. These mutants exhibit spontaneous, repetitive firing of action potentials in the motor axons of larval neuromuscular junctions². The eag gene encodes a polypeptide³ that shares sequence similarities with several different ionic channel proteins, including voltage-gated potassium channels³, an inward rectifier^4,5 as well as cyclic-nucleotide-gated channels⁶. These formal similarities in the derived primary sequences indicate that eag polypeptides might express a new type of ion channel. Here we report the expression by eag RNA in Xenopus oocytes of such a channel which incorporates properties of both voltage- and ligand-gated channels. The perme-ability of these eag channels to potassium and calcium is dependent on voltage and cyclic AMP. The ability to mediate potassium-outward and calcium-inward currents endows this channel with properties likely to be important in the modulation of synaptic efficiency in both central and peripheral nervous systems.

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