Opening and Closing of KcnkØ Potassium Leak Channels Is Tightly Regulated

Potassium-selective leak channels control neuromuscular function through effects on membrane excitability. Nonetheless, their existence as independent molecular entities was established only recently with the cloning of KCNKØ from Drosophila melanogaster. Here, the operating mechanism of these 2 P domain leak channels is delineated. Single KCNKØ channels switch between two long-lived states (one open and one closed) in a tenaciously regulated fashion. Activation can increase the open probability to ∼1, and inhibition can reduce it to ∼0.05. Gating is dictated by a 700-residue carboxy-terminal tail that controls the closed state dwell time but does not form a channel gate; its deletion (to produce a 300-residue subunit with two P domains and four transmembrane segments) yields unregulated leak channels that enter, but do not maintain, the closed state. The tail integrates simultaneous input from multiple regulatory pathways acting via protein kinases C, A, and G.