Department of Physiology and Biochemistry and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA.
Long thought to be potassium channels with calming influence quietly working away in the background, in this issue of Neuron, Thomas et al. demonstrate that K(2P)2.1 (TREK-1) channels have two endogenous isoforms due to a mechanism called alternative translation initiation (ATI). Hence, they can actually be excitable.