In the November 26 issue of Nature magazine, a team of researchers including project scientist Alfredo Freites, graduate student Eric Schow, and Professor Doug Tobias of the Department of Chemistry, Professor Stephen White of the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Drs. Kenton Swartz, Dmitriy Krepkiy, and Klaus Gawrisch at the NIH, and Ella Mihailescu and David Worcester at NIST report a concerted neutron diffraction, NMR, and molecular dynamics simulation study of the voltage-sensing domain from a potassium channel in a lipid membrane. The study reveals membrane distortion and internal hydration induced by the protein that have implications for the mechanism of transmembrane voltage sensing by membrane proteins.