Function
In excitable cells such as neurons, they shape action potentials and set the resting membrane potential.
By contributing to the regulation of the action potential duration in cardiac muscle, malfunction of potassium channels may cause life-threatening arrhythmias. Potassium channels may also be involved in maintaining vascular tone.
They also regulate cellular processes such as the secretion of hormones (e.g., insulin release from beta-cells in the pancreas) so their malfunction can lead to diseases (such as diabetes).
Read more about this topic: Potassium Channel
Famous quotes containing the word function:
“Any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information—hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“The uses of travel are occasional, and short; but the best fruit it finds, when it finds it, is conversation; and this is a main function of life.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The intension of a proposition comprises whatever the proposition entails: and it includes nothing else.... The connotation or intension of a function comprises all that attribution of this predicate to anything entails as also predicable to that thing.”
—Clarence Lewis (1883–1964)