Potassium Channel Origami Windmill Model: A New Fundamental Hypothesis of Life Comparable to the DNA Double-Helix Model

Potassium Channel Origami Windmill Model: A New Fundamental Hypothesis of Life Comparable to the DNA Double-Helix Model

Sun Zuodong

In 1953, Watson and Crick published a concise paper of only a few hundred words, putting forward the DNA double-helix model. This elegantly simple structural framework pinned down the underlying logic of biological inheritance and laid the foundation for modern molecular biology. To this day, it remains one of the most iconic classic structural models in the history of life sciences.

In another core domain of life science — bioelectricity and neural signal transmission — the Potassium Channel Origami Windmill Model is proposed herein. It seeks to fill a critical gap in our understanding of dynamic biological mechanisms. In terms of paradigm rank, model-building logic and the significance of the scientific question, it represents a novel fundamental structural hypothesis of life comparable in scope to the DNA double-helix.

These two models share a highly consistent scientific construction pathway, echoing one another across more than seventy years.

Both draw on massive volumes of prior experimental data and crystal-structure observations, respect well-confirmed objective measurements, and do not contradict established experimental findings. Both discard redundant and convoluted inferences, and deploy extremely parsimonious geometric models to explain a whole class of core biological mechanisms. In each case, the core skeletal framework is established first, while peripheral extended inferences are left for subsequent verification and iteration; the core system is internally consistent and self-standing.

Complementing each other, the two models together form two main threads for understanding how life operates at its most basic level.

The DNA double-helix model addresses the fundamental rules governing biological inheritance, information storage and inter-generational transmission, explaining how life perpetuates itself.

The Potassium Channel Origami Windmill Model addresses the dynamic mechanisms behind bioelectric activity, signal conduction and cellular gating. It attempts to account for the generation of action potentials and cardiac electrical activity.

Over the past two decades, the academic community has built upon static crystal structures of potassium channels resolved by MacKinnon’s group and other teams. Literature has interpreted the so-called “open-petal” conformation as a static conformational switch, and channel gating has been explained by helix sliding. This framework, however, encounters certain self-consistency challenges when accounting for continuous electrophysiological dynamic processes.

The Potassium Channel Origami Windmill Model offers an alternative interpretation: rather than stationary petals, the four sets of helical subunits of the potassium channel function as four synchronously rotating blades capable of continuous speed modulation. It is hypothesized that rotation is driven by electrostatic repulsion among ions without ATP consumption. Pore diameter is regulated by rotational speed to capture and release ions. Whether this interpretation holds true awaits independent experimental testing in future work.

Clear, falsifiable criteria for evaluation are laid out for the present model. It is not presented as settled fact, and is open to inspection, revision or even falsification by follow-up researchers.

Throughout the history of science, paradigm-shifting breakthroughs have often come not from lengthy tomes but from concise models that cut straight to fundamental principles. When first published, the DNA double-helix model likewise faced skepticism and gained acceptance only through gradual validation. The Potassium Channel Origami Windmill Model stands in a similar position: it does not negate existing experimental observations, nor does it seek to arbitrarily overturn prior research. It merely provides another self-consistent paradigm for interpreting dynamic mechanisms.

We make no judgment on whether older paradigms are right or wrong, nor do we claim to have reached definitive proof. This paper simply advances the viewpoint: at the level of the underlying mechanisms of bioelectrical signalling in living organisms, the Potassium Channel Origami Windmill Model constitutes a paradigm-level attempt of comparable magnitude. Extending this line of reasoning gives rise to the proposed DNA origami-windmill tetramer model, which may jointly open up the cross-disciplinary research field of “cellular bioelectrical genetics”. Much like that brief original manuscript on the double helix, we set down the core model here, leaving it to time and future investigators for scrutiny and validation.