Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 4, 2025

Membrane Remodeling of Giant Vesicles in Response to Localized Calcium Ion Gradients
Published on: July 16, 2018
Functional large-conductance calcium and voltage-gated potassium channels in extracellular vesicles act as
Shridhar Sanghvi1,2, Divya Sridharan3, Parker Evans4
1Department of Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA.
Abstract:
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are associated with intercellular communications, immune responses, viral pathogenicity, cardiovascular diseases, neurological disorders, and cancer progression. EVs deliver proteins, metabolites, and nucleic acids into recipient cells to effectively alter their physiological and biological response. During their transportation from the donor to the recipient cell EVs face differential ionic concentrations, which can be detrimental to their integrity and impact their cargo content. EVs are known to possess ion channels and transporters in their membrane but neither the function nor the role of these channels in EVs is known. In this study, we discover a functional calcium-activated large-conductance potassium channel (BKCa) in the membrane of EVs. Furthermore, we establish that BKCa is essential for the structural and functional integrity of EVs. Together, these findings establish the critical role of ion channels such as BKCa in functioning as gatekeepers and maintaining EV-mediated signaling.
More Related Videos
11:42Reconstitution of a Transmembrane Protein, the Voltage-gated Ion Channel, KvAP, into Giant Unilamellar Vesicles for Microscopy and Patch Clamp Studies
Published on: January 22, 2015
10:19Patch Clamp and Perfusion Techniques for Studying Ion Channels Expressed in Xenopus oocytes
Published on: January 10, 2011
Related Concept Videos
Voltage-gated Ion Channels
Generally, all voltage-gated ion channels have a 'voltage-sensing domain' that spans the lipid bilayer. The charged residues in the sensor move in response to the membrane potential changes that open the channel allowing ions movement. There are several...
The Role of Ion Channels in Neuronal Computation
Sometimes a single EPSP is strong enough to induce an action potential in the postsynaptic neuron. However, multiple presynaptic inputs must often create EPSPs around the same time for the postsynaptic neuron to be sufficiently depolarized to fire an action potential....
Fusion of Secretory Vesicles with the Plasma Membrane
In 1993, Jim Rothman proposed that the antiparallel pairing of vesicular and transmembrane SNAREs, or...
Overview of Secretory Vesicles
Various proteins regulate the aggregation of molecules inside the secretory vesicles. Chromogranins...
Non-gated Ion Channels
Compared to the gated ion channels, the non-gated channels, also known as leakage or passive channels, have no gating mechanism....
Ion Channels
Ion channels are specialized integral membrane proteins on the plasma membrane that allow...