Sue Jones
University of Cambridge, UK

Annette Dolphin, Mala Shah & Trevor Smart
University College London, UK

https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.93.17

19 July 2013, Royal Society, London, UK

It is 33 years since the published discovery of the ‘M current’ for which David A. Brown (FIBiol, FRS) and his colleague Paul R. Adams (FRS) are so well known (Brown and Adams, 1980). This voltage- and time-dependent, non-inactivating K+ current limits subthreshold neuronal excitability; muscarinic receptor activity inhibits M current, removing the “brake” on excitability and enabling membrane depolarization. David is internationally renowned for his work on M (and other) channel biophysics, function and regulation. In addition, David has led with distinction the Pharmacology Departments at The School of Pharmacy and University College London and held visiting Professorships at the Universities of Chicago, Iowa, Texas and Kanazawa and a prestigious Fogarty Scholarship-in-Residence at the NIH.

Throughout his career at St Bartholomew’s (1967-73), The School of Pharmacy (1974-87) and UCL (1987-2002), David has trained over 20 PhD students and 30 postdoctoral researchers and has hosted 15 visiting researchers with a tireless commitment to international collaboration and scientific exchange.

In recognition of these contributions, a one day symposium on Ion channel regulation and neuronal physiology (affectionately dubbed ‘DABfest’) was held at the Royal Society in London on 19 July 2013. The symposium was organised by Mala Shah and Trevor Smart and was supported by The Physiological Society, The British Pharmacological Society and UCL. Over 100 of David’s colleagues, collaborators, friends and visitors from around the world came to hear inspiring talks, to reacquaint and to reminisce.

Thomas Jentsch (Leibniz Institute for Molecular Biology) gave the opening plenary presentation on KCNQ channels in the auditory and vestibular apparatus, highlighting their functional and clinical significance (thereby reminding us just how important the M current discovery was). In a session dedicated to the M current, Mark Shapiro (University of Texas, San Antonio) told us about ‘The Elusive Transduction Signal’ (PIP2), and Naoto Hoshi (University of California, Irvine) described the importance of co-ordinated local intracellular signalling for M current regulation. The functional role of M channels in pain sensation was described by Nikita Gamper (University of Leeds), and Mala Shah (UCLSoP) revealed the contribution of M channels to axonal excitability.

After lunch, other ion channels appeared on the menu, some of which David has worked on during his career, including Ca2+-activated K+ currents (Neil Marrion, University of Bristol), ion channels in osmosensation (Charles Bourque, McGill University Canada) and GABA-gated Cl- channels (Trevor Smart, UCL). The focus then turned to synapses: the role of nitric oxide (John Garthwaite, UCL), an intriguing perspective on LTP (Paul Adams, SUNY at Stony Brook), and in the closing plenary presentation Roger Nicoll (University of California, San Francisco) gave a modest and very entertaining account of his experiences in the fields of synaptic ionotropic and metabotropic receptors.

This one day symposium captured beautifully David’s wide interests in ion channels, and the talks were received with interest and enthusiasm from a packed room. But alongside the science was a sense of great personal warmth towards a man who has fostered an international scientific family over the past 45 years.

References

Brown and Adams (1980). Nature 283, 673-676