Nature Neuroscience
3, 771 - 779 (2000)
doi:10.1038/77670
SLO-2, a K+ channel with an unusual Cl-
dependenceAlex Yuan1, Michelle Dourado2, Alice Butler1, Nina Walton1, Aguan Wei1
& Lawrence Salkoff1, 31
Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Washington
University School of Medicine, 660 South Euclid,
Saint Louis, Missouri 63110, USA
2
Division of Oral Biology, Box 0152, University of California, San Francisco, California 94143, USA
3
Department of Genetics, Washington University School
of Medicine, 660 South Euclid, Saint Louis,
Missouri 63110, USA
Correspondence should be addressed to Lawrence Salkoff salkoffl@thalamus.wustl.eduThe gating of different potassium channels depends on many diverse factors.
We now report a unique example of a K+ channel with a Cl
- dependence. The slo-2 gene was cloned from Caenorhabditis
elegans and is widely expressed in both neurons and muscles; it was highly
abundant, as suggested by its high representation in the C. elegans
EST database. SLO-2, like its paralogue, SLO-1, was also dependent on Ca
2+. We show by site-directed mutagenesis that its requirements for
both Cl- and Ca2+ are synergistic and
associated with the same functional domain. SLO-2's dependence on Cl
- implies that intracellular Cl- homeostasis
may be important in regulating cellular excitability through this unusual
K+ channel.
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