Multiphasic profiles for voltage-dependent K+ channels: Reanalysis of   data of MacKinnon and coworkers
  In a study of the role that voltage-dependent K+ channels may have in the mechanosensation of living cells (Schmidt et al. Proc Soc Natl Acad Sci USA 109: 10352-10357. 2012), the data were as conventionally done fitted by a Boltzmann function. However, as also found for other data for ion channels, this interpretation must be rejected in favor of a multiphasic profile, a series of straight lines separated by discontinuous transitions, quite often in the form of noncontiguities (jumps). The data points in the present study are often very unevenly distributed around the curvilinear profiles. Thus, for 43 of the 75 profiles, the probability is less than 5% that the uneven distribution is due to chance, for 26 the probability is less than 1%, and for 12 the probability is less than 0.1%, giving a vanishingly low overall probability for all profiles. Especially at low voltages, the differences between the fits to curvilinear and multiphasic profiles may be huge. In the multiphasic profiles, adjacent lines are quite often parallel or nearly so, in which case the transitions are, necessarily, in the form of jumps. The lines in the multiphasic profiles appear to be perfectly straight, with no indication of any curvilinearity. The r values are for the most part high, quite often exceedingly high. In addition to activation of ion channels, a wide variety of biological as well as non-biological processes and phenomena involving binding, pH, folding/unfolding and effect of chain length can be well represented by multiphasic profiles (Nissen 2015a,b, 2016. Posted on arXiv.org with Paper ID arXiv: 1511.06601, 1512.02561 and 1603.05144). Introduction 
Per Nissen
physics.bio-ph