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More pics from Abbott Lab Medicinal Plant Collection Trip 001, Muir Woods National Monument
Abbott Lab summer interns are working hard to discover new therapeutic agents from medicinal plants.
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Ancient and modern anticonvulsants synergize in a potassium channel binding pocket
Check out the Abbott lab article published in Nature Communications….
Discovery of direct regulation of Kv channels by a neurotransmitter
Congratulations to Drs. Rian Manville and Maria Papanikolaou, whose work in the Abbott lab discovering a novel mode of neurotransmitter signaling has been published in Nature Communications….
KCNE1 and KCNE3: the yin and yang of voltage-gated potassium channel regulation
In collaboration with the Cardiac Gene Wiki Review series and GENE, I have written three review articles on the KCNE gene family, aimed at a general scientific audience and published in GENE in 2015 and 2016. These include the recent article describing KCNE4 and KCNE5, a review contrasting KCNE1 and KCNE3, and a previous review…
The role of KCNQ1-KCNE2 in the thyroid
Using the Kcne2 knockout mouse model that we generated, combined with techniques ranging from positron emission tomography to patch-clamp electrophysiology, we have discovered a crucial role of KCNQ1-KCNE2 channels in the thyroid gland. KCNQ1-KCNE2 is required for normal iodide uptake through the sodium/iodide symporter (NIS), and we found that Kcne2 deletion causes hypothyroidism, especially during…
Extracardiac source of monogenic arrhythmogenesis
We previously generated a mouse line lacking the Kcne3 gene. KCNE3 regulates a number of voltage-gated potassium channels, including those formed from Kv2, Kv3 or Kv4 subfamily alpha subunits. KCNE3 also inhibits the hERG alpha subunit, which forms a current, IKr, crucial for human ventricular repolarization. Most notably, KCNE3 converts channels formed from the KCNQ1…
Kv channel-solute transporter interactions
The KCNQ1 voltage-gated potassium (Kv) channel pore-forming (α) subunit is ubiquitously expressed and linked to life-threatening human disorders including Long QT syndrome, atrial fibrillation and diabetes. KCNQ1 exhibits a high degree of functional flexibility enabled by co-assembly with KCNE family β subunits, facilitating roles both in excitable cell repolarization, and as a constitutively active K+…