This article evaluates the effect of membrane active channel-forming polyene antibiotic (PA) of levorin and its alkyl derivatives on the muscle performance. The membrane channels of muscle cells are capable to transport ions of potassium, sodium, and calcium. In the period of an intensive muscle exercise, the necessity for organic substrates increases and these channels start to work with the g...

Aconitine-modified sodium channels in the neuroblastoma cell membrane were investigated with patch-clamp technique in outside-out configuration. When aconitine (0.1 mmol/l) was present in the pipette solution two types of modified single sodium channels were observed. The first type showed openings with normal amplitude (slope conductance 15.5 pS) and bursting behaviour. The second type of modi...

We have explored the permeation and blockage of ions in sodium channels, relating the channel structure to function using electrostatic profiles and Brownian dynamics simulations. The model used resembles the KcsA potassium channel with an added external vestibule and a shorter selectivity filter. The electrostatic energy landscape seen by permeating ions is determined by solving Poisson's equa...

Sodium channels are central to a host of fundamental cellular processes, including sensory perception, pain, and muscle contraction. In order to understand any of these processes in detail, it is necessary to know the atomic structure of the channel proteins both with and without bound sodium ions. In this issue, Naylor et al (2016) present the structure of a bacterial sodium channel tetramer. ...

The density of sodium channels in premyelinated axons was estimated from measurements of the binding of [3H]saxitoxin to neonatal rat optic nerve. The maximum saturable binding capacity of the nerve was 16.2 +/- 1.2 fmol/mg of wet weight, with an equilibrium dissociation constant of 0.88 +/- 0.18 nM (mean +/- SEM). These values correspond to a high-affinity saxitoxin-binding site density of app...

We use Brownian dynamics (BD) simulations to study the ionic conduction and valence selectivity of a generic electrostatic model of a biological ion channel as functions of the fixed charge Q(f) at its selectivity filter. We are thus able to reconcile the discrete calcium conduction bands recently revealed in our BD simulations, M0 (Q(f)=1e), M1 (3e), M2 (5e), with a set of sodium conduction ba...

Nociceptive sensory neurons are unusual in expressing voltage-gated inward currents carried by sodium channels resistant to block by tetrodotoxin (TTX) as well as currents carried by conventional TTX-sensitive sodium channels and voltage-dependent calcium channels. To examine how currents carried by each of these helps to shape the action potential in small-diameter dorsal root ganglion cell bo...

The group-specific protein reagents, N-bromoacetamide (NBA) and N-bromosuccinimide (NBS), modify sodium channel gating when perfused inside squid axons. The normal fast inactivation of sodium channels is irreversibly destroyed by 1 mM NBA or NBS near neutral pH. NBA apparently exhibits an allor-none destruction of the inactivation process at the single channel level in a manner similar to inter...

Calcium- and sodium- activated potassium channels are members of the 6TM family K which comprises voltage-gated KV subfamilies, including KCNQ subfamily, EAG subfamily (which includes hERG channels), Ca2+-activated Slo (actually with 6 or 7TM) Ca2+- Na+-activated SK (nomenclature as agreed by NC-IUPHAR Subcommittee on sodium-activated [125]). As for 2TM family, pore-forming a subunits form tetr...

BACKGROUND According to animal experiments, a protein-enriched diet increased renal absorption of sodium and water. We wanted to test the hypothesis that a protein-enriched diet would increase the expression of the aquaporin-2 water channels and the epithelial sodium channels in the distal part of the nephron using biomarkers for the activity of the two channels. METHODS We performed a random...