Potassium channel phosphorylation in excitable cells: providing dynamic functional variability to a diverse family of ion channels.

Phosphorylation of potassium channels affects their function and plays a major role in regulating cell physiology. Here, we review previous studies of potassium channel phosphorylation, focusing first on studies employing site-directed mutagenesis of recombinant channels expressed in heterologous cells. We then discuss recent mass spectrometric-based approaches to identify and quantify phosphorylation at specific sites on native and recombinant potassium channels, and newly developed mass spectrometric-based techniques that may prove beneficial to future studies of potassium channel phosphorylation, its regulation, and its mechanism of channel modulation.