title: Modular thermal sensors in temperature-gated transient receptor potential (TRP) channels.
abstract: The molecular basis of the thermal sensitivity of temperature-sensitive channels appears to arise from a specific protein domain rather than integration of global thermal effects. Using systematic chimeric analysis, we show that the N-terminal region that connects ankyrin repeats to the first transmembrane segment is crucial for temperature sensing in heat-activated vanilloid receptor channels. Changing this region both transformed temperature-insensitive isoforms into temperature-sensitive channels and significantly perturbed temperature sensing in temperature-sensitive wild-type channels. Swapping other domains such as the transmembrane core, the C terminus, and the rest of the N terminus had little effect on the steepness of temperature dependence. Our results support that thermal transient receptor potential channels contain modular thermal sensors that confer the unprecedentedly strong temperature dependence to these channels.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology and Biophysical Sciences, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14214, USA.
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yao
authors.forename: Beiying
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Feng
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Qin
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D055592:Biophysical Phenomena; D015640:Ion Channel Gating; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D017434:Protein Structure, Tertiary; D051381:Rats; D011993:Recombinant Fusion Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D050916:TRPV Cation Channels / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology*; D013696:Temperature; D013816:Thermodynamics
chemical_list: D011993:Recombinant Fusion Proteins; D050916:TRPV Cation Channels; C493922:Trpv1 protein, rat; C476722:Trpv2 protein, rat