Characterizing the Ion-Conductive State of the α7-Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptor via Single-Channel Measurements and Molecular Dynamics Simulations

The α7-nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (α7-nAChR) is a cation-selective member of the superfamily of Cys-loop receptors. Ubiquitously expressed throughout the body of vertebrate animals, this pentameric ligand-gated ion channel participates in a wide range of physiological phenomena — as diverse as synaptic transmission and the control of excessive inflammation — and is an attractive therapeutic target for novel ligands. Although notable efforts have been made to understand this receptor-channel in terms of function and structure, many questions remain unanswered despite the molecular simplicity of its homomeric assembly. Recent cryo-EM studies have provided atomic models of this channel in different conformations, thus enabling the application of atomistic molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to the study of cation conduction. We perform both single-channel patch-clamp recordings and MD simulations on the α7-nAChR. MD simulations of an α7-nAChR model (PDB ID 7KOX) reproduced the measured single-channel conductance and revealed Poissonian ion permeation, which we further modelled as a double-Poisson process incorporating inter-event delay times. We found that cations can enter the channel through lateral fenestrations in the extracellular domain although the probability of ions following this lateral pathway — rather than the axial one — is much lower than observed in simulations of other Cys-loop receptors. We also examined other atomic models (PDB ID 7EKT and 8V80) of the α7-nAChR proposed to represent partially open states of the channel and found them to be non-conductive. This study provides insight into how ions permeate through the pore of the α7-nAChR and offers a detailed analysis of an ion-conductive conformation likely to represent the physiological open state of this receptor-channel.