Potassium Voltage Gated Channel Shaw Related Subfamily, Member 4 (KCNC4)

The Shaker gene family of Drosophila encodes components of voltage-gated potassium channels and comprises four subfamilies. Based on sequence similarity, this gene is similar to the Shaw subfamily.

KCNC4 belongs to the delayed rectifier class of channel proteins and is an integral membrane protein that mediates the voltage-dependent potassium ion permeability of excitable membranes. It generates atypical voltage-dependent transient current that may be important for neuronal excitability. Several transcript variants encoding different isoforms have been found for this gene.Rudy et al. (1991) reported the cloning of a human K+ channel ShIII cDNA (HKShIIIC) obtained from a brainstem cDNA library. By in situ hybridization, they demonstrated that the gene maps to 1p21.