Ion channels function like transistors in generating the electrical activity in the nervous system, enabling different types of neurons to perform different functions. Electrical impulses passing through neurons are the basic currency of information in the brain, and cells differ in the frequencies at which they fire.
Some neurons emit rapid barrages of impulses, for example, whereas others tick like a clock.
The impulses are propagated by the opening and closing of ion channels that gate an electrical current carried by sodium or potassium ions across the nerve cell membrane. Salkoff studies the voltage-dependent ion channels that conduct potassium ions out of the cell. Starting in 1984, his group began to clone the genes that encode potassium channels, using the fruit fly as a model organism. The research has uncovered a large number of potassium channel genes that fall into conserved gene families. Using DNA sequences from the medical school's Genome Sequencing Center, Salkoff's group compiled about 50 genes belonging to eight gene families in the roundworm.