Projects in this subgroup combine structure, function, and simulation approaches to characterize various types of pentameric ligand-gated ion channels, particularly their modulation by allosteric drugs such as alcohol, anesthetics, or insecticides.
Contributors:
Erik Lindahl, Professor- Reba Howard, Team Lead
- Paul Bauer, Researcher
- Laura Orellana, Researcher
- Artem Zhmurov, Researcher
- Linnea Axelsson, PhD Student
- Cathrine Bergh, PhD Student
- Marie Lycksell, PhD Student
- Urška Rovšnik, PhD Student
- Yuxuan Zhuang, PhD Student
Recent publications
- Heusser SA, Lycksell M, Wang X, McComas SE, Howard RJ, Lindahl E. Allosteric potentiation of a ligand-gated ion channel is mediated by access to a deep membrane-facing cavity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (2018) 115: 10672–10677. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1809650115.
- Fourati Z*, Howard RJ*, Heusser SA, Hu H, Ruza RR, Sauguet L, Lindahl E, Delarue M. Structural basis for a bimodal allosteric mechanism of general anesthetic modulation in pentameric ligand-gated ion channels. Cell Reports (2018) 23: 993–1004. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2018.03.108. *equal contributions
- Howard RJ, Carnevale V, Delemotte L, Hellmich UA, Rothberg BS. Permeating disciplines: Overcoming barriers between molecular simulations and classical structure-function approaches in biological ion transport. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta – Biomembranes (2018) 1860: 927–942. doi: 10.1016/j.bbamem.2017.12.013.
- Orellana L, Yoluk O, Carrillo O, Orozco M, Lindahl E. Prediction and validation of protein intermediate states from structurally rich ensembles and coarse-grained simulations. Nature Communications (2016) 7: 12575. doi: 10.1038/ncomms12575.