Ching Kung

At the very physical and chemical foundation, “what is true for E. coli is true for the elephant”. The Kung lab is unique in using microbes (Paramecium, yeast, E. coli) to understand the molecular bases of ion-channel structure and function. Of all the findings the most important is the discovery of mechanosensitive ion channels. The bacterial MscL and MscS revealed that it is the lipid-bilayer stretch force that opens these channels. [Kung, C. (2005) A possible unifying principle for mechanosensation. Nature 436: 647-654.] The Force-from-lipid (FFL) principle has now been shown to underlie known mechanosensitive channels examined from plants and animals. It now explains how animals sense touch and sound. The Nobel-winning Piezo channels operate on this principle. Recent findings showed that Tmc1 and Tmc2, the hair-cell transduction channels can also be opened with membrane stretch.