Abstract:

Membrane ion channels operate in accordance with the main principles of coordination chemistry. Coordination number is known to determine the ion selectivity of the sodium and potassium channels. there are known both ligand-dependent and ligand-controlled ion channels operating within the supramolecular coordination fixation principles. The channel-forming ionophores form the structures which bind cations via coordination bonds leading to the conformational changes with the adjustment of the whole supramolecular architecture providing the ion channel selectivity. Such kind of non-covalent systems underlie the electrogenic membrane functions and the potential-controlled transmembrane ion transfer systems. They can be studied by means of the path-clamp method (i.e. the local membrane potential fixation), such as the «anion clamp», applied together with the analysis of the metal ion coordination geometry with the ion channels. However, such methods are not capable to register the ion channel conformational state in situ – during the ion coordination – with the molecular resolution of the ion channel structure. In this regard there is a need to develop dynamical methods capable of the simultaneous registration of the conformational and metallomic / elementomic coordination parameters and the electrophysiological response to the ion coordination. We propose to develop for this purpose a special kind of spectroscopic systems providing registration of the electrophysiological parameters and the single ion channel response by means of the local potential fixation techniques (patch-clamp / voltage-clamp) with the advanced spectral processing and the subsequent data mining, with the simultaneous spectral detection of the ion channel state as a coordination and conformationally labile supramolecular structure, with the final data processing results presented not as the single spectra, but as the spectral correlogram.

Keywords: patch-clamp, voltage-clamp, real time spectral analysis, coordination chemistry, biocoordination chemistry, ion channels, QSAR, QSPR, SBGN