Pressure dependence of the potassium currents of squid giant axon.
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Animals↗
Biomedical subjects
W Stühmer
Publications and source records attributed to W Stühmer.
Photobleaching through glass micropipettes: sodium channels without lateral mobility in the sarcolemma of frog skeletal muscle.
Sodium currents were recorded from frog skeletal muscle by using fire-polished micropipettes to electrically isolate and voltage clamp a small patch of sarcolemma. Sodium current amplitude served as an assay for the number of functional sodium channels in the patch. With the pipette as a light guide, these channels were irradiated with ultraviolet (UV) light directed through a quartz fiber into the back end of the pipette. The UV light emerging from the pipette tip caused localized destruction of the sodium channels in the patch, reducing sodium current 3- to 5-fold during a 30-90 s irradiation. If sodium channels could diffuse laterally in the membrane, current from the patch should recover with time as fresh channels enter from neighboring areas. No such recovery was observed during observation for 1 hr after irradiation. Our results set an upper limit of 10(-12) cm2/s for the diffusion coefficient--1/1000th that of rhodopsin, a membrane protein in the cell membrane of retinal rods. It is suggested that sodium channels are anchored in the sarcolemma.
Ion Channels↗
[Metabolism of isoaminiles].
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Antitussive Agents↗
Patch-clamping of the inner mitochondrial membrane reveals a voltage-dependent ion channel.
The prime function of mitochondria is to provide the cell with adenosine triphosphate (ATP). ATP synthesis is driven by the protonmotive force (delta p), which is generated and maintained across the inner mitochondrial membrane (IMM) by the activity of the respiratory chain. It is widely believed that the IMM is unlikely to contain ion channels like those present in the plasma membrane, because the high rates of ion transport characteristic of open channels would be expected to dissipate the delta p. Although the small size of the organelle has prevented the use of classical electrophysiological methods, the recent introduction of the patch-clamp technique, which allows currents to be recorded from very small cells, has enabled us to test this hypothesis. By patch-clamping the IMM, we have identified a slightly anion-selective channel, which is voltage-dependent and has a mean conductance of 107 pS in the presence of symmetrical 150 mM KCl.
Adenosine Triphosphate↗