Guohui Zhang, Yanyan Geng, Yakang Jin, Jingyi Shi, Kelli McFarland, Karl L Magleby, Lawrence Salkoff, Jianmin Cui
Large conductance Ca2+ -activated K+ channels (BK channels) gate open in response to both membrane voltage and intracellular Ca2+ The channel is formed by a central pore-gate domain (PGD), which spans the membrane, plus transmembrane voltage sensors and a cytoplasmic gating ring that acts as a Ca2+ sensor. How these voltage and Ca2+ sensors influence the common activation gate, and interact with each other, is unclear. A previous study showed that a BK channel core lacking the entire cytoplasmic gating ring (Core-MT) was devoid of Ca2+ activation but retained voltage sensitivity (Budelli et al...
March 6, 2017: Journal of General Physiology