Gating at the Selectivity Filter of Ion Channels that Conduct Na+ and K+ Ions

The NaK channel is a cation selective channel with similar permeability for K+ and Na+. The available crystallographic structure of wild-type (WT) NaK is usually associated with a conductive state of the channel. Here, potential of mean force for complete conduction events of Na+ and K+ ions through NaK show that: i), large energy barriers prevent the passage of ions through the WT NaK structure, ii), the barriers are correlated to the presence of a hydrogen bond between Asp-66 and Asn-68, and iii), the structure of NaK mutated to mimic cyclic nucleotide-gated channels conducts Na+ and K+. These results support the hypothesis that the filter of cation selective channels can adopt at least two different structures: a conductive one, represented by the x-ray structures of the NaK-CNG chimeras, and a closed one, represented by the x-ray structures of the WT NaK.