(Up) Molecular structure of the selectivity filter of a KcsA potassium channel. Adjacent carbonyl rings exhibit a 27 degree rotation. Inspired by this structural feature, bi-layer graphene ...

The field of neurotrauma and epilepsy research has increasingly highlighted the pivotal influence of ion channels in the transition from traumatic brain ...

Most ion channels are very selective about the ions that may or may not pass through them. They may be conductive for potassium ions and non-conductive for sodium ions, or vice versa. However, a ...

Intrigued by the properties of ion channel proteins commonly observed in cells, researchers have developed the first synthetic mechanosensitive potassium channel using a newly developed aromatic ...

Researchers have revealed how a channel that controls cellular potassium levels causes metabolic rewiring in breast cancer cells, promoting tumour growth. The study, published as a Reviewed Preprint ...

For this article, author Jennifer Fisher Wilson interviewed Roderick MacKinnon, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and head of the Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology and Biophysics at ...

Ion channels in the nervous system are among the most important targets for insecticides. Understanding the structure of the channels is key for the identification of novel species-specific binding ...

Crina M. Nimigean is in the Department of Anesthesiology and in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, New York 10021, USA. Read the paper: Molecular ...

When a scrappy team of scientists joined forces in the late 1990s, they sought to identify genetic mutations that could have an outsized impact on the treatment of human disease. At the time, that ...

Underlying every thought, heartbeat and movement are ion channels, busily conducting high-speed streams of ions into cells, like subway trains coursing through tunnels. Ion channels span the cellular ...

Following this design principle, the researchers create angstrom-scale pores in bi-layer graphene sheets, and decorate the two pore edges with twisted rings of carbonyl groups. The artificial ion ...