Ion Channel Structure
Voltage-gated ion channels and their close relatives generate electrical signals in cells, resulting in intracellular calcium transients that control secretion, contraction, sensation, synaptic transmission, gene expression, and many other cellular processes. Pioneering work by Professor Roderick MacKinnon at Rockefeller University led first to the structure of the bacterial potassium channel KcsA, a member of the structural family of inwardly rectifying potassium channels, and later to the structure of the more complex voltage-gated potassium channel KV1.2, but progress on the structure of the voltage-gated ion channels and their relatives in the field as a whole remained slow and difficult. This Special Issue on Ion Channel Structure highlights the flowering of ion channel structural studies in the decade beginning in 2011 and continuing to the present based on improved methods for analysis of membrane protein structure by x-ray crystallography, dramatic advances in structural studies of membrane proteins by cryogenic electron microscopy, and most recently increased accuracy in prediction of the structures of membrane proteins by computational methods based on artificial intelligence algorithms. This tsunami of structural work has made ion channels among the most well-known membrane proteins at the structural level and revealed their fundamental properties of voltage-dependent gating, ion conductance and selectivity, regulation by second messenger signaling processes, and modulation by pharmacological agents in atomic detail. Here we capture some of the highlights of this extensive body of work with comprehensive reviews and perspective articles on voltage-gated sodium channels, voltage-gated calcium channels, voltage-gated and inwardly rectifying potassium channels, cyclic nucleotide-gated ion channels, and transient receptor potential channels. We hope that gathering these studies together in this Special Issue of Channels will catalyze new advances in the structural biology of ion channels and further define their function and pharmacology at the atomic level.
Edited by
Dr. William A. Catterall(Department of Pharmacology, University of Washington)
Dr. Vladimir Yarov-Yarovoy(Department of Physiology and Membrane Biology, University of California, Davis)
Gerald Zamponi(Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, University of Calgary)