Many animals have the ability to sense and react to electric fields. Living human cells will move along an electric field for wound healing. But how do they sense the electric fields? A research team led by Min Zhao at the UC Davis Institute for Regenerative Cures now has found the first "sensor mechanism" that allows a living cell to detect an electric field. Their work is published in the journal Nature Communications on Oct. 9.
These researchers believed that there were several types of sensing mechanisms, and none of them were known. Now they provide experimental evidence to suggest a mechanism which has not been even hypothesized before. It is a two-molecule sensing mechanism.
Zhao and his colleagues have been studying these "electric senses" in cells from both larger animals and in the soil-dwelling amoeba Dictyostelium. By knocking out some genes in Dictyostelium, they previously identified some of the genes and proteins that allow the amoeba to move in a certain direction when exposed to an electric field.
In the new research a human cell line, they found that two elements, a protein called Kir4.2 which is made by gene KCNJ15, and molecules within the cell called polyamines, were needed for signaling to occur. Kir4.2 is a potassium channel. It forms a pore through the cell membrane that allows potassium ions to enter the cell. Such ion channels are often involved in transmitting signals into cells. Polyamines are molecules within the cell that carry a positive charge.
During the researche, they found that when the cells were in an electric field, the positively-charged polyamines tend to accumulate at the side of the cell near the negative electrode. The polyamines bind to the Kir4.2 potassium channel, and regulate its activity.
Zhao said that haven't got definitive evidence of how "switching" of the potassium channel by polyamines translates into directional movement by the cell. But the exploration of the sixth sense will never stop.
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