Potassium Channels in the Nodal Membrane of Rat Myelinated Fibres

Following some preliminary reports, mammalian fibres from rabbit and rat have recently been successfully studied in detail by means of the voltage clamp. The early transient or sodium conductance system was found to be similar to that in frog and squid axons. However, the delayed conductance or potassium currents were found to be negligible. Only after chemical and osmotic manipulations, which were said to expose channels buried under the myelin, did Chiu and Ritchie find delayed currents in rabbit fibres. If confirmed, this would mean that the membrane conductance system of mammalian fibres is so different from that of invertebrate and amphibian axon models as to make the data base gathered from amphibian myelinated fibres (frog and toad) and invertebrate giant axons (squid and myxicola) irrelevant to human nd other mammalian fibres. However, we show here that it is possible to find in the normal nodal membrane of rat myelinated fibres potassium currents that flow through channels which are similar in many respects to those found in the frog node of squid axons.