How to Force Conformity on Transmitter-Gated Channels

Neurotransmitter-gated ion channels (LGIC) transduce a presynaptic event (release of transmitter) into a postsynaptic event (opening of channels). Given the vagaries of life for a synapse—the quantal content, the number of transmitter molecules in a vesicle, the exact release site, the statistics of transmitter binding, noise in the postsynaptic cell, and so forth—it would seem to be advantageous for fidelity in signal transmission for some aspects of the process to be tightly controlled. Indeed, the idea that the functional properties of the ion channels are well defined and reasonably homogeneous is necessary for biophysicists to analyze the kinetics from population measurements. All in all, relatively few data have to be swept under the rug in our effort to define “the” characteristic behavior of a given type of LGIC. However, there are recurring observations of variability in the kinetic properties...