Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by alan-hn 718 days ago
Reactions don't need to happen, the magnesium ion is a single atom that interacts with the NMDA receptor to block it at specific potentials. When the postsynaptic neuron gets enough input at a synapse, there is enough change in the charge inside the cell where it allows the Mg2+ ion to be displaced from the pore to allow cations to pass through

Our cells use single atoms, usually in the form of charged ions, on a regular basis and we would not survive without them

1 comments

But wouldn't xenon (as a noble gas) be pretty hard to ionize? Without a charge it shouldn't interact the way ions do.
Charge is not the only way that molecules interact

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_der_Waals_force