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Structural biology

Highly charged meetings

When it comes to proteins and their environments, opposites repel. So how is the highly charged, polar helix of a transmembrane ion channel accommodated by a non-polar membrane? Easily, if the charges are buried.

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Figure 1: Structure of a voltage-gated potassium channel.

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Lee, A. Highly charged meetings. Nature 462, 420–421 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/462420a

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