Gating

Gating may refer to:

Neurobiology

Technology

Other

and see also

Gating (punishment)

Gating is a type of punishment similar to a detention used typically at educational institutions, especially boarding schools. Precisely what a gating consists of and the rules surrounding it will vary between institutions, but the common element is that someone who has been gated is not permitted to leave the establishment. The word is used as both a noun and a verb.

References

Gating (electrophysiology)

In electrophysiology, the term gating refers to the opening (activation) or closing (by deactivation or inactivation) of ion channels.

When ion channels are in a 'closed' (non-conducting) state, they are impermeable to ions and do not conduct electrical current. When ion channels are in an open state, they conduct electrical current by allowing some ions to pass through them, and thus across the plasma membrane of the cell. These flows of ions across the membrane result in an electrical current across the membrane. Gating is the process of an ion channel transforming between any of its conducting and non-conducting states.

The name 'gating' derives from the idea that an ion channel protein includes a pore that is guarded by a gate or several gates, and the gate(s) must be in the open position for any ions to pass through the pore. A variety of cellular changes can trigger gating, depending on the ion channel, including changes in voltage across the cell membrane (voltage-gated ion channels), drugs or hormones interacting with the ion channel (ligand-gated ion channels), changes in temperature, stretching or deformation of the cell membrane, addition of a phosphate group to the ion channel (phosphorylation), and interaction with other molecules in the cell (e.g., G proteins). The rate at which any of these gating processes occurs in response to these triggers are known as the 'kinetics of gating.' Some drugs and many ion channel toxins act as 'gating modifiers' of voltage-gated ion channels by changing the kinetics of gating.