Deciphering The Molecular Mechanism Of Sk2 Channel Activation By Intracellular Calcium To Develop New Therapeutic Agents

This issue of Acta Physiologica presents the latest work of Dr. Zhang and his team concerning the mechanism of activation of small-conductance Ca -activated K (SK) channels, and more precisely the SK2 subtype. Indeed, these still poorly understood channels play important roles in the physiology and the pathology of several types of cells. SK channels are encoded by four different genes, namely KCNN1 for SK1 (KCa2.1), KCNN2 for SK2 (KCa2.2), KCNN3 for SK3 (KCa2.3) and KCNN4 for SK4 (IK or KCa3.1) channels.