Thanks to a collaborative effort involving split intein-mediated protein engineering and MD simulations (credit to the group of Prof Lucie Delemotte), we were able to show how some Nav1.5 patient mutations are functionally benign – until they get phosphorylated and wreak havoc on inactivation. We were also able to provide insight on the basic mechanism of inactivation and how phosphorylation can affect Nav1.5 pharmacology. Big kudos to Keith Khoo for providing the foundation for the project. Get the full story here.

Despite an injury-related reduction of the team size, a few CBP members managed to make it out to the KMD mini triathlon to battle against the clock. And waves. And wind.

We were finally able to resume our tradition of cruising around Copenhagen harbor again this year – thanks to everyone for making it a fun outing!

The work represents the culmination of a long-term effort to decipher the stoichiometry and conformational landscape of the ASIC-PcTx1 interaction. Started way back in 2015, it took many concatemers (big thanks to Janne!) and countless recordings of WT and virtually toxin-insensitive channels (with and without fluorescent labeling) to decipher the mechanism and stoichiometry of this interaction. Read the full here.

As government and university restrictions are lifted, we can finally look forward to more lab events again! After a long Covid-related hiatus, we will re-start our boating tradition, have an in-person MSc day and also go on a lab retreat – lots of things to look forward to!

Congrats to Chow for being given the opportunity to talk (virtually) at the Oxford Department of Pharmacology about his work on NALCN – and thanks to Paolo Tammaro for hosting!

Congratulations to Stephanie and Chow for putting together a hugely popular virtual ion channel symposium. They assembled a great line up of speakers and as a result, both days of the symposium attracted around 250 attendees. The talks can now also be viewed on YouTube: Talks from Day 1 and Talks from Day 2.

Janne had her 25-year work anniversary at the institute today – congratulations! Along with the rest of the department, we are extremely grateful for all her contributions, help and advice in pretty much every imaginable matter. Thank you for being around and thank you for being awesome!

We took full advantage of the encroaching spring weather and the new rules for meeting outside to have a walking tour around Amager – thanks a lot to Stephanie and Debayan for organising (and supplying snacks, drinks and ice cream)!

After many delays (mea culpa!), we finally posted our work on P2X2 receptor gating on bioRxiv. Huge thanks to Federica Gasparri, first-ever PhD student of the Pless lab, who was later joined by Sarune Bielickaite and Mette H. Poulsen on the project. We show that mutating the inter-subunit interfaces consistently increases apparent ATP affinity.