Ramu Yajamana, Xu Yanping, Lu Zhe
Department of Physiology, University of Pennsylvania, 3700 Hamilton Walk, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA.
Nature. 2006 Aug 10;442(7103):696-9. doi: 10.1038/nature04880. Epub 2006 Jun 21.
Voltage-gated ion channels in excitable nerve, muscle, and endocrine cells generate electric signals in the form of action potentials. However, they are also present in non-excitable eukaryotic cells and prokaryotes, which raises the question of whether voltage-gated channels might be activated by means other than changing the voltage difference between the solutions separated by the plasma membrane. The search for so-called voltage-gated channel activators is motivated in part by the growing importance of such agents in clinical pharmacology. Here we report the apparent activation of voltage-gated K+ (Kv) channels by a sphingomyelinase.
可兴奋神经、肌肉和内分泌细胞中的电压门控离子通道以动作电位的形式产生电信号。然而，它们也存在于非兴奋性真核细胞和原核生物中，这就引发了一个问题：电压门控通道是否可能通过改变质膜分隔的溶液之间的电压差以外的其他方式被激活。寻找所谓的电压门控通道激活剂的部分动机在于此类药物在临床药理学中日益增长的重要性。在此，我们报告了一种鞘磷脂酶对电压门控钾（Kv）通道的明显激活作用。
