Emelia KarlssonPhD student

Pentameric ligand-gated ion channels (pLGICs) act like doors in cells by allowing ions to move from one cell to another. These doors are widely expressed in all kingdoms of life, and some have vital roles in our nervous system as information carriers across the synaptic cleft between nerve cells. A signal can only propagate if the doors are open, therefore, we need keys to unlock them, such as psychostimulants, including alcohols and amphetamines. Despite pLGICs' physiological significance, we still lack mechanistic information on how the doors work since each structure represents a snapshot under a specific condition, meaning what happens "in between" is unknown. My research interest focuses on the "in between" part; by functionally characterizing how psychostimulants affect the activation, modulation, and gating of pLGICs, in other words, how the doors open, how a doorstop (modulator) keeps a door open/closed for a longer time, and how doors move from closed to open and vice versa. Increasing our mechanistic understanding will be helpful in the future development of pharmacological and therapeutic agents for treating drug addiction and neurological disorders.