This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Researchers have discovered a gene for a tandem potassium channel in an algal virus. The finding supports the view that giant viruses may have contributed significantly to the evolution of complex proteins.
The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. So-called tandem potassium channels perform important functions in human physiology. Because they can conduct potassium ions (K+) across the cell membrane, they help, among other things, to stabilize the membrane potential and thereby regulate the electrical excitability of nerve cells.
Structurally, they differ from all other potassium channels in that two of their four pore-forming subunits are directly linked to each other. It is this tandem-like linkage of the subunits that gives them their name. Unlike every other type of potassium channel, precursors of tandem potassium channels have not been found in bacteria, which has raised questions about their evolutionary origin.
In the PNAS article, the international team, including researchers from the Department of Biology at TU Darmstadt and the Department of Natural Sciences at Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences (H-BRS), reports on a DNA virus that infects marine algae and whose genome contains a gene for a tandem potassium channel. "Our experiments show that this gene encodes a protein with the functional properties of a potassium channel," says Dr. Oliver Rauh, a scientist in the DFG research network "CytoTransport" at H-BRS.
The authors of the study also examined the evolutionary relationships between the newly discovered viral channel and known tandem potassium channels and made a striking discovery: Contrary to what is assumed for most viral genes, the newly discovered potassium channel gene did not end up in the viral genome by being stolen from the host's genetic material. Rather, the gene appears to be of viral origin. "This finding further reinforces a new perspective according to which the giant mimiviruses, to which this virus belongs, have played a central role in the evolution of proteins in higher organisms," emphasizes Gerhard Thiel, a professor in the Department of Biology at TU Darmstadt.
The results of the study also underline that these viruses are rich sources of interesting proteins. In the same virus, other researchers have already discovered a light-controlled ion channel that is used in optogenetics, a field recently recognized with the Nobel Prize. Oliver Rauh et al., A functional two-pore-domain K+ channel from a large DNA virus, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2026).
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