Abstract
Two examples of our most recent investigations using high-speed atomic force microscopy were provided. (1) The calcium pump reaction cycle was captured as up-and-down motions, corresponding to the conformational changes of the pump during ATP-mediated ion transport. The motion pictures obtained suggest that the pump would not exactly follow the Post-Alberts schema in the physiological condition. (2) The binding of two agonists (glycine and aspartate) to the hetero-tetrameric GluN1/GluN2A receptor triggered a structural change in the extracellular domain of the receptor without desensitization. This change was abolished in the presence of a selective antagonist, D-(−)-2-amino-5-phosphonopentanoic acid.
