In a significant breakthrough, researchers at Ben-Gurion University's Cryo-EM Unit, in collaboration with the Department of Life Sciences, have determined the near-atomic structure of a medically important membrane protein at 2.8 Å resolution. The structure sheds new light on the gating mechanism of a voltage-gated ion channel implicated in cardiac arrhythmias.

The cryo-EM data were collected on the unit's Glacios 2 microscope over a three-day session, with over 4,000 micrograph movies acquired. Single-particle analysis was performed using RELION 4.0 and cryoSPARC, revealing distinct open and closed conformational states.

The findings have been submitted to Nature Structural & Molecular Biology and are currently available as a preprint on bioRxiv. The atomic model has been deposited in the RCSB Protein Data Bank (PDB).