What do KCNQ2 and related potassium channels do in the brain?

In collaboration with Lily Jan and others at UCSF, Dr. Cooper discovered that brain KCNQ2 and KCNQ3 potassium channels were bound in a detergent-insoluble protein complex.  With collaborators at Penn, he found this protein complex was located at axonal intial segments and nodes of Ranvier.   The initial segments (highlighted in figure 1, right) are tiny subdomains of the axon where voltage-gated sodium channels spark the action potential, the neuron's fast long-distance signal. Because they are in the axon and so small, these subdomains are very difficult to study and poorly understood.  The team then showed that ankyrin-G, a protein known to bind voltage-gated sodium channels on axons, also bound KCNQ2 and KCNQ3.  Surprisingly, the sequence motifs required for this binding the two unrelated channel types were very similar (figure 2, "anchor" motifs).  Ongoing work is exploring the molecular basis of these interactions, the consequences of this binding for axonal function, and the significance of the protein complex for epilepsy and bipolar disorder.  

Why do these channels cause epilepsy that starts shortly after birth and disappears with later development? Why do some mutations cause a transient seizures only, but others cause persistent severe limitations in motor, social, and intellectual development even after seizures stop?

KCNQ2 and KCNQ3 mutations cause benign familiar neonatal seizures (bfns).   These mutations are passed on in autosomal dominant fashion--affected individuals have seizures that usually begin in the first week of life and remit within a few months.  In 2012, novel mutations in KCNQ2 were discovered that cause a more severe syndrome in which epilepsy is accompanied by developmental delay ("KCNQ2 encephalopathy").  We are analyzing the reasons for this genotype-phenotype relationship, and the implications for treatment of the persistently affected infants and older individuals.  Methods include patch clamp electrophysiology in cultured cells and neurons.  Novel approaches are also underway.

How can post-translational modifications of ion channels be comprehensively monitored?

It's cool, and powerful, that rapid openings and closings of  ion channels can be captured by electrophysiological recording, in real time, at the level of a single molecule (single channel recording) or together in groups ranging from a few to a few million (whole cell recording).  However, each channel  is also a crossroads for regulation by and of intracellular pathways .  Post-translational modification of the endodomains of channels and associated proteins are one aspect of this conversation between the neuron's interior metabolism and membrane electrical signaling.  Such modifications, including phosphorylation and ubiquitinylation,  are thought to be a ubiquitous mechanism for rapid-onset, reversible, but potentially durable modulation in ion channel function.  Nonetheless, they are very incompletely understood.  We have worked to develop multidimensional approaches combining traditional biochemical and newer mass spectrometry approaches to  measure changes in modification state underlying neuromodulation, dynamically and quantitatatively.