They are thought to take part in the interaction with the channel, being determinant to the affinity of the peptide, and contributing to the blockage of the potassium flux across the channel [14]. As observed in the alignment with the others κ-KTxs (Fig. 2), the κ-KTx2.5 possesses the amino acid residue V in the position corresponding

to the Y, and in the place of the Lys residue, it possess another amino acid in which the side chain has positive charge at pH 7.0, the R15, which could comply with the chemical characteristics required for the binding, as it has been proposed for the K15/K19 present in the others κ-KTxs. Interestingly, from a cone snail species some peptides were described with a tertiary PLX4032 purchase check details structure that resembles the Csα/α scorpion toxins, and where the functional dyad is

absent, with indicative K+-channel blocking activity [19]. Despite these differences in the amino acid composition between κ-KTx2.5 and the others κ-KTxs, the native κ-KTx2.5 (16 μM) reduced K+ currents through Kv1.4 and Kv1.1 by 50 and 20%, respectively. The absence of the functional dyad, the K15/K19 and the aromatic residue (Y5 in κ-KTxs), in this case, did not caused the affinity loss for voltage-gated K+-channels, and is not necessarily essential for the Kv1.1, and Kv1.4 blockage as shown for the κ-KTx2.5 data. For this reason a simulation of the interaction Amoxicillin between κ-KTx2.5 and the Kv1.2 channel, whose structure has been solved, was done by an in silico docking. The docking suggests an interaction between the K+-channel D348 residue and peptide N24 residue, with the distance

of 3.7 Å, but it happens only with one channel subunit, and left the remainder subunits free. The peptide stands up one subunit, leaving the channel pore unbarred. A second κ-KTx2.5 added to the docking simulation interacted to another channel subunit (data not shown), and could then clogged the pore mainly by toxin-toxin interactions. This could be sustained by the Hill coefficients experimentally obtained of almost 2. Assuming this is a reasonable mode of interaction between κ-KTx2.5 and K+-channels, it could explain the great amount of toxin needed to reduce K+-currents through the channels. It is worth mentioning that the recognition sites of Kv1.x (the loop between S5 and S6 segments) are highly conserved in Kv1.1, Kv1.2, Kv1.3, and Kv1.4 (Fig. 8), particularly the D348 residue, allowing us to extrapolate the experimental data obtained with Kv1.1 and Kv1.4 to the in silico studies.