Suter Science Seminars
Monday, March 30, 2009
4 p.m., Science Center 104
Voltage Sensors and Electrical Signaling in the Nervous System
Kenton Swartz, Ph.D.
Most of us learned to appreciate the importance of electricity at a very young age. It powers many useful and entertaining human made devices; a light for seeing the world, a computer for searching the internet, or an omnipresent iPod for listening to music. Although the concept that all living organisms use electricity as a fundamental mechanism for signaling across membranes and between cells is less widely appreciated, scientists have been thinking about the biological roles of electricity dating back to the late 18th century.
Today we know a great deal about the biological roles and importance of electrical signals. In humans, electrical signals are used to complete a computational task within the cerebral cortex, to secrete insulin after a meal, to tell a muscle when to contract, or to signal that a sperm has entered an egg and embryogenesis should commence. In my talk I will review the principles by which electrical signals are generated in biology and summarize our current understanding of the molecular structure and operating principles of the ion channel proteins that generate and carry electrical signals.
I will also discuss our current understanding of the mechanism by which voltage sensors within ion channel proteins sense the voltage across cell membranes, a process fundamental to biology’s solution for the problem of propagating signals over long distances on the millisecond timescale.
About the Presenter
Kenton Swartz, Ph.D.
Kenton Swartz received a B.S. degree in Chemistry and Biology in 1986 from Eastern Mennonite College. In 1992 he received a Ph.D. in Neurobiology from Harvard University, studying the regulation of voltage-gated calcium channels. He did postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School, where he began isolating and studying toxins that interact with voltage-activated potassium channels.
Kenton joined NINDS as an Investigator in 1997 and was promoted to Senior Investigator in 2003. His laboratory is using biochemical, molecular biological and biophysical techniques to investigate the structure of voltage-activated ion channels and to explore the molecular mechanics by which these channels gate.
