Summary: Calcium-activated BK potassium channel alpha subunit
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Calcium-activated BK potassium channel alpha subunit Provide feedback
No Pfam abstract.
This tab holds annotation information from the InterPro database.
InterPro entry IPR003929
Potassium channels are the most diverse group of the ion channel family [PUBMED:1772658, PUBMED:1879548]. They are important in shaping the action potential, and in neuronal excitability and plasticity [PUBMED:2451788]. The potassium channel family is composed of several functionally distinct isoforms, which can be broadly separated into 2 groups [PUBMED:2555158]: the practically non-inactivating 'delayed' group and the rapidly inactivating 'transient' group.
These are all highly similar proteins, with only small amino acid changes causing the diversity of the voltage-dependent gating mechanism, channel conductance and toxin binding properties. Each type of K+ channel is activated by different signals and conditions depending on their type of regulation: some open in response to depolarisation of the plasma membrane; others in response to hyperpolarisation or an increase in intracellular calcium concentration; some can be regulated by binding of a transmitter, together with intracellular kinases; while others are regulated by GTP-binding proteins or other second messengers [PUBMED:2448635]. In eukaryotic cells, K+ channels are involved in neural signalling and generation of the cardiac rhythm, act as effectors in signal transduction pathways involving G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and may have a role in target cell lysis by cytotoxic T-lymphocytes [PUBMED:1373731]. In prokaryotic cells, they play a role in the maintenance of ionic homeostasis [PUBMED:11178249].
All K+ channels discovered so far possess a core of alpha subunits, each comprising either one or two copies of a highly conserved pore loop domain (P-domain). The P-domain contains the sequence (T/SxxTxGxG), which has been termed the K+ selectivity sequence. In families that contain one P-domain, four subunits assemble to form a selective pathway for K+ across the membrane. However, it remains unclear how the 2 P-domain subunits assemble to form a selective pore. The functional diversity of these families can arise through homo- or hetero-associations of alpha subunits or association with auxiliary cytoplasmic beta subunits. K+ channel subunits containing one pore domain can be assigned into one of two superfamilies: those that possess six transmembrane (TM) domains and those that possess only two TM domains. The six TM domain superfamily can be further subdivided into conserved gene families: the voltage-gated (Kv) channels; the KCNQ channels (originally known as KvLQT channels); the EAG-like K+ channels; and three types of calcium (Ca)-activated K+ channels (BK, IK and SK) [PUBMED:11178249]. The 2TM domain family comprises inward-rectifying K+ channels. In addition, there are K+ channel alpha-subunits that possess two P-domains. These are usually highly regulated K+ selective leak channels.
BK channels (also referred to as high-conductance, maxi-K channels or Slo family channels) [PUBMED:17115074] are widely expressed in the body, being found in glandular tissue, smooth and skeletal muscle, as well as in neural tissues. They have been demonstrated to regulate arteriolar and airway diameter, and also neurotransmitter release. Each channel complex is thought to be composed of 2 types of subunit; the pore-forming (alpha) subunits and smaller accessory (beta) subunits.
The alpha subunit of the BK channel was initially thought to share the characteristic 6TM organisation of the voltage-gated K+ channels. However, the molecule is now thought to possess an additional TM domain, with an extracellular N terminus and intracellular C terminus. This C-terminal region contains 4 predominantly hydrophobic domains, which are also thought to lie intracellularly. The extracellular N terminus and the first TM region are required for modulation by the beta subunit. The precise location of the Ca2+-binding site that modulates channel activation remains unknown, but it is thought to lie within the C-terminal hydrophobic domains.
The sodium-activated potassium channels Slick (Slo2.1, KCNT2) and Slack (Slo2.2, KCNT1) belong to the structurally related high-conductance potassium channels of the Slo family [PUBMED:26587966]. Slo3, also a member of the Slo family, is exclusively expressed in mammalian sperm [PUBMED:23129643].
Gene Ontology
The mapping between Pfam and Gene Ontology is provided by InterPro. If you use this data please cite InterPro.
Cellular component | membrane (GO:0016020) |
Biological process | potassium ion transport (GO:0006813) |
Domain organisation
Below is a listing of the unique domain organisations or architectures in which this domain is found. More...
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Pfam Clan
This family is a member of clan TrkA_C (CL0582), which has the following description:
This superfamily is characterised by families that form part of voltage-gated ion channels found in a wide range of bacteria, archaea, eukaryotes and viruses.
The clan contains the following 3 members:
BK_channel_a Castor_Poll_mid TrkA_CAlignments
We store a range of different sequence alignments for families. As well as the seed alignment from which the family is built, we provide the full alignment, generated by searching the sequence database (reference proteomes) using the family HMM. We also generate alignments using four representative proteomes (RP) sets, the UniProtKB sequence database, the NCBI sequence database, and our metagenomics sequence database. More...
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We make a range of alignments for each Pfam-A family. You can see a description of each above. You can view these alignments in various ways but please note that some types of alignment are never generated while others may not be available for all families, most commonly because the alignments are too large to handle.
Seed (70) |
Full (3188) |
Representative proteomes | UniProt (5104) |
NCBI (13636) |
Meta (6) |
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RP15 (520) |
RP35 (991) |
RP55 (1917) |
RP75 (3068) |
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PP/heatmap | 1 |
1Cannot generate PP/Heatmap alignments for seeds; no PP data available
Key:
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Seed (70) |
Full (3188) |
Representative proteomes | UniProt (5104) |
NCBI (13636) |
Meta (6) |
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RP15 (520) |
RP35 (991) |
RP55 (1917) |
RP75 (3068) |
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Raw Stockholm | |||||||||
Gzipped |
You can also download a FASTA format file containing the full-length sequences for all sequences in the full alignment.
HMM logo
HMM logos is one way of visualising profile HMMs. Logos provide a quick overview of the properties of an HMM in a graphical form. You can see a more detailed description of HMM logos and find out how you can interpret them here. More...
Trees
This page displays the phylogenetic tree for this family's seed alignment. We use FastTree to calculate neighbour join trees with a local bootstrap based on 100 resamples (shown next to the tree nodes). FastTree calculates approximately-maximum-likelihood phylogenetic trees from our seed alignment.
Note: You can also download the data file for the tree.
Curation and family details
This section shows the detailed information about the Pfam family. You can see the definitions of many of the terms in this section in the glossary and a fuller explanation of the scoring system that we use in the scores section of the help pages.
Curation
Seed source: | PRINTS |
Previous IDs: | none |
Type: | Family |
Sequence Ontology: | SO:0100021 |
Author: |
Griffiths-Jones SR |
Number in seed: | 70 |
Number in full: | 3188 |
Average length of the domain: | 96.50 aa |
Average identity of full alignment: | 43 % |
Average coverage of the sequence by the domain: | 8.84 % |
HMM information
HMM build commands: |
build method: hmmbuild -o /dev/null HMM SEED
search method: hmmsearch -Z 47079205 -E 1000 --cpu 4 HMM pfamseq
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Model details: |
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Model length: | 98 | ||||||||||||
Family (HMM) version: | 19 | ||||||||||||
Download: | download the raw HMM for this family |
Species distribution
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Interactions
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TrkA_NStructures
For those sequences which have a structure in the Protein DataBank, we use the mapping between UniProt, PDB and Pfam coordinate systems from the PDBe group, to allow us to map Pfam domains onto UniProt sequences and three-dimensional protein structures. The table below shows the structures on which the BK_channel_a domain has been found. There are 18 instances of this domain found in the PDB. Note that there may be multiple copies of the domain in a single PDB structure, since many structures contain multiple copies of the same protein sequence.
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