Potassium channels regulate neuronal signaling, control the flow of salt across epithelia, heart rate, vascular tone, and the release of hormones such as insulin, and protect neurons and muscles under metabolic stress. In order to study potassium channels, we have chosen to isolate individual potassium channel genes so that the channels they give rise to can be studied one at a time, and then compared with potassium channels in native tissues.

This molecular study was initiated by positional cloning of the Shaker voltage-gated potassium channel gene in the fruit fly and expression cloning of inwardly rectifying potassium channels, founding members of two large, distantly related families of potassium channels. Mutations of potassium channels in these families cause diseases of the brain (epilepsy, episodic ataxia), ear (deafness), kidney (hypertension), pancreas (hyperinsulinemic hypoglycemia of infancy), heart (arrhythmia), skeletal muscle (periodic paralysis), as well as developmental abnormalities of neural crest-derived tissues (Andersen's syndrome). Understandably, potassium channel openers and blockers have been developed for pharmaceutical purposes. A better understanding of potassium channel function will therefore not only satisfy our curiosity, it will have clinical significance. We are currently taking a range of experimental approaches-- electrophysiological, cell biological, biochemical and genomic--to examine the physiological functions of potassium channels.