We’ve been struggling for more than a couple of years, to find a publication home for our finding that the potassium channel Slo2.1 (aka Slick, KCNT2) is the one in the mitochondrion required for anesthetic preconditioning (APC).  Finally it was accepted last week in Anesthesiology, and should be in press fairly soon. Here are a few key points…

1) Slo2.1 is required for APC. Knockout mice can’t be protected by volatile anesthetics. This establishes Slo2.1 as a novel drug target to protect the heart against ischemic injury.

2) This lays to rest once-and-for-all the cacophony regarding a potential role for Slo1 in APC. There were a LOT of papers linking Slo1 to APC based on problematic pharmacology and the fact that it’s a KCa channel. Slo2.1 is a KNa channel.

3) We can’t rule out that there might still be Slo1 in mitochondria. I do have some issues with the papers published in this area, but even if mito’ Slo1 does exist, it’s not important for APC, as we showed in 2011 (and people still don’t seem to get).