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A personal perspective of the voltage-gated potassium channel studies

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The identification of sodium and potassium currents as underlying action potential propagation, more than 70 years ago, opened a new avenue of research into the role of ion channels. In this Comment, we present our personal perspectives of the field, from the identification of Shaker as a potential potassium channel to the mechanistic insights available to us today.

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Acknowledgements

We appreciate the collegiality of the ion channel field, and we thank former and current lab members for their scientific contributions to this field. L.Y.J. and Y.N.J. are investigators of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and supported by NIH grants R35NS122110 (to L.Y.J.) and R35NS097227 (to Y.N.J.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physiology, University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Lily Yeh Jan & Yuh Nung Jan

  2. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Lily Yeh Jan & Yuh Nung Jan

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  1. Lily Yeh Jan
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  2. Yuh Nung Jan
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Correspondence to Lily Yeh Jan or Yuh Nung Jan.

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The authors declare no competing interest.

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Jan, L.Y., Jan, Y.N. A personal perspective of the voltage-gated potassium channel studies. Nat Struct Mol Biol 31, 580–581 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41594-024-01267-w

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