Scientist who described structure of potassium ion channels to speak

Dr. Roderick MacKinnon, professor at Rockefeller University and investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, will present the next Einar Hille Memorial Lecture in Neurosciences, sponsored by the Department of Physiology and Biophysics. He will speak on “Potassium Ion Channels” at 4 p.m., Tuesday, May 23, in Hogness Auditorium of the Health Sciences Center. The lecture is free and open to everyone.

MacKinnon revolutionized the study of ion channels two years ago when he was the first to find and describe the three-dimensional structure of a potassium selective ion channel. Ion channels are proteins in our nerve and muscle cells that form pores across the cell’s membrane that allow ions to move through. The passage of ions through these channels produces the electrical signal used by our nervous system for processes as important as receiving sensations, learning and memory. Only potassium ions can pass through a potassium channel; sodium and calcium channels also allow only those ions to pass through.

Roderick MacKinnon

The mechanism that allows these channels to select only potassium ions has been a mystery for almost 50 years. But over the last decade, MacKinnon and his colleagues have mapped out the structure of the potassium channel pores. The work culminated in their use of X-ray crystallography to show the three-dimensional structure of a bacterial potassium channel. His group has also determined the X-ray crystal structure of several other channel domains and proteins important for channel function.

MacKinnon earned a bachelor’s deree in biochemistry at Brandeis University and an M.D. from Tufts University School of Medicine. He became interested in ion channels while working as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Christopher Miller at Brandeis. Before he moved his laboratory to Rockefeller University in 1996, he was a faculty member at Harvard Medical School.

He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences this year and last fall received the 1999 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, along with Dr. Clay Armstrong and Dr. Bertil Hille, professor of physiology and biophysics at the UW. Hille is the son of the late Dr. Einar Hille, for whom the lecture is named.

The lectureship was established by Kirsti Hille in honor of her husband, who was a professor of mathematics at Yale University and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.