The Human cardiac transient outward potassium channel,Kv4.3:A study of its Pharmacology and modulation by Disease states

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The contraction of the heart is triggered by electrical activity.For every heart beat,electrical activity known as an action potential,occurs.This involves a rapid change in voltage inside the heart cells which must then be quickly restored to the normal resting level or sudden death ensues. Both the initial rapid change (known as depolarisation), and its restoration to normal, (repolarisation), are produced by electrical currents flowing through the cell membrane.The currents responsible for repolarisation are mainly carried by potassium ions.A number of these outward potassium channels exist and the present study is concerned with one of the most important of them, known as the transient outward current. The transient outward current has recently been found to be modulated by disease states,such as thickening of the heart muscle and heart failure.It is also known to be blocked by a number of drugs,some of which are used to treat abnormal heart rhythms.It is therefore of particular interest to clinical cardiologists This channel has been difficult to study in the past because it is usually mixed with several other currents in experiments on living heart cells.The gene which codes for it was identified in 1996 and we now have a cell-line in tissue culture in our laboratory which has only this particular channel,allowing us to study it systematically in isolation from other currents.This study forms the basis of our application.