BrainBlog

A press release from the NIH : Scientists Zero in on the Cellular Machinery that Enables Neurons to Fire If you ever had a set of Micronauts — toy robots with removable body parts — you probably had fun swapping their heads, imagining how it would affect their behavior. Scientists supported by the National Institutes of Health have been performing similar experiments on ion channels — pores in our nerve cells — to sort out the channels' key functional parts. In the November 15 issue of Nature , one group of researchers shows that a part of ion channels called the paddle is uniquely transplantable between different channels. Writing in the same issue, another group exploited this property to probe the three-dimensional structure of ion channels on an atomic scale. "The effects of many toxins and therapeutic drugs, as well as some diseases, can be wholly explained by changes in ion channel function," says Story Landis, Ph.D., director of the National Institute of Neurologic...