UCL Discovery
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery

Conservation of alternative splicing in sodium channels reveals evolutionary focus on release from inactivation and structural insights into gating

Liavas, A; Lignani, G; Schorge, S; (2017) Conservation of alternative splicing in sodium channels reveals evolutionary focus on release from inactivation and structural insights into gating. The Journal of Physiology , 595 (16) pp. 5671-5685. 10.1113/JP274693. Gold open access

[thumbnail of Lignani_et_al-2017-The_Journal_of_Physiology.pdf]
Preview
Text
Lignani_et_al-2017-The_Journal_of_Physiology.pdf - Published Version

Download (2MB) | Preview

Abstract

Voltage-gated sodium channels are critical for neuronal activity, and highly intolerant to variation. Even mutations that cause subtle changes in the activity these channels are sufficient to cause devastating inherited neurological diseases, such as epilepsy and pain. However, these channels do vary in healthy tissue. Alternative splicing modifies sodium channels, but the functional relevance and adaptive significance of this splicing remain poorly understood. Here we use a conserved alternate exon encoding part of the first domain of sodium channels to compare how splicing modifies different channels, and to ask whether the functional consequences of this splicing have been preserved in different genes. Although the splicing event is highly conserved, one splice variant has been selectively removed from Nav1.1 in multiple mammalian species, suggesting that the functional variation in Nav1.1 is less well-tolerated. We show for three human channels (Nav1.1, Nav1.2 and Nav1.7) splicing modifies the return from inactivated to deactivated states, and the differences between splice variants are occluded by antiepileptic drugs that bind to and stabilize inactivated states. A model based on structural data can replicate these changes, and indicates that splicing may exploit a distinct role of the first domain to change channel availability, and that the first domain of all three sodium channels plays a role in determining the rate at which the inactivation domain dissociates. Taken together, our data suggest that the stability of inactivated states is under tight evolutionary control, but that in Nav1.1 faster recovery from inactivation is associated with negative selection in mammals.

Type: Article
Title: Conservation of alternative splicing in sodium channels reveals evolutionary focus on release from inactivation and structural insights into gating
Location: England
Open access status: An open access publication
DOI: 10.1113/JP274693
Publisher version: http://doi.org/10.1113/JP274693
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright © 2017 The Authors. The Journal of Physiology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The Physiological Society This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology > Clinical and Experimental Epilepsy
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences > Neuro, Physiology and Pharmacology
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1561086
Downloads since deposit
80Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item