TBA

Ion channels form the basis of electrical excitability of neurons and muscle cells. In response to specific electrical or chemical stimuli, these membrane proteins open a pathway across the cell membrane for selected ions, causing changes in membrane potential or intracellular levels of calcium. Activation of an ion channel is under extremely precise control that allows highly specialized processes, e.g., photoreceptor cells to detect the presence of a single photon. Research in my laboratory focuses on the protein structures critical for channel organization, activation, and modulation. The moving parts of the channel are labeled with fluorophores that serve as a molecular sensor for local conformational rearrangements. Recording the fluorescence emission let us directly observe channel structural changes in real time under physiological conditions. The same population of channels is simultaneously monitored with patch-clamp recordings so that we can correlate structure changes to the channel\u27s function states. In particular, we use Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) to measure atomic distances between channel structures