Genes encoding a family of potassium channels

摘要

A first aspect of the present invention is the isolation and characterization of invertebrate (i.e. insect and nematode) potassium channel genes. The present invention provides for the isolation of complementary DNA fragments from Drosophila melanogaster and Caenorhabditis elegans which encode conserved amino acid sequence elements unique to the potassium channel gene family. A yeast expression technology is employed to clone cDNAs from Drosophila melanogaster and a hybridization approach is utilized to isolate additional cDNAs from Caenorhabditis elegans. Using the yeast expression technology, a single 2463 base pair cDNA fragment designated Dm ORF1 is isolated.