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A single amino acid gates the KcsA channel

Minako Hirano1, Daichi Okuno2, Yukiko Onishi2

  • 1Bio Photonics Laboratory, The Graduate School for the Creation of New Photonics Industries, 1955-1 Kurematsu Nishi-ku Hamamatsu, Shizuoka 431-1202, Japan; Laboratory for Cell Dynamics Observation, Quantitative Biology Center, RIKEN, 6-2-3 Furue-dai Suita, Osaka 565-0874, Japan.

Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications
|July 15, 2014
PubMed
Summary

The KcsA channel, a proton-activated potassium channel, opens constitutively after mutating a key residue (E146) in its cytoplasmic domain. Minimal structural changes in this domain are sufficient for pH-independent channel opening.

Keywords:
Ion channelKcsA channelRearrangementSingle-channel recordingpH-dependent gating

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