Stable modal gating in adult endplate AChRs. (A) Stable normal-mode gating. (Left) Continuous single-channel recording displayed as seven traces obtained with on-cell patch-clamp recording from HEK cells with expressed WT mouse AChRs. Opening is downward. The clusters of activity arise from AChRs coming out of desensitization (D) to gate (C-O), and then returning to desensitization. (Middle) Histogram of the number of clusters versus their mean Po. Only a single normal mode of activity is seen with a Po of 0.7. (Right) Dwell-time distributions of shut- and open-interval durations are each described by a single exponential, indicating gating in two states (C-O). (B) Four stable modes of gating after the mutation P197A in the α subunits. (Left) Single-channel current record during continuous recording displayed as seven traces. (Middle) Gating in four different stable modes with mean durations of 0.01, 0.20, 0.67, and 0.96. (Right) The dwell-time distributions of the entire current record are described by multiple exponentials, indicating different kinetics for the different modes. See Fig. 2 of Vij et al. (2015) for further details.