Copyright © 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. 

Towards the three-dimensional structure of voltage-gated potassium channels 

Senyon Choe(a), Andreas Kreusch(a) and Paul J. Pfaffinger(b)

a Structural Biology Laboratory, The Salk Institute, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA
b Division of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA 



Electrical excitability is a fundamental property of the neuromuscular systems 
of metazoans. The varied response of neurons to electrical excitation is largely 
accounted for by a diverse set of voltage-gated potassium (KV) channels in the 
excitable membrane. The complete structure of a KV channel is not yet available. 
However, recent structural biological experiments have begun to provide new 
insight into how specific KV channels are formed and regulated, and how they 
function and interact with other proteins. In particular, the selectivity of KV 
channels for K+ and suggestions as to how these structural elements might 
assemble into a functional KV channel are discussed.