Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Furini S
PROVIDER: S-EPMC2752519 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Sep
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Furini Simone S Domene Carmen C
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20090904 38
Potassium channels can conduct passively K+ ions with rates of up to approximately 10(8) ions per second at physiological conditions, and they are selective to these species by a factor of 10(4) over Na+ ions. Ion conduction has been proposed to involve transitions between 2 main states, with 2 or 3 K+ ions occupying the selectivity filter separated by an intervening water molecule. The largest free energy barrier of such a process was reported to be of the order of 2-3 kcal mol(-1). Here, we pr ...[more]