They contribute to osmotic pressure of body fluids as well as performing a number of other important functions.
Below is a list of some of the most important ions for living things as well as examples of their functions: Potassium ion channels play a key role in maintaining the membrane's electric potential.
This allows sodium ions to coordinate much more intensive processes such as movement and cognition.
[8] These sodium ion channels consist of four internally homologous domains, each of which containing six transmembrane segments and resembling a single subunit of a voltage-dependent potassium ion channel.
[9] Chloride ion channels have been found to play crucial roles in the development of human diseases, for example, mutations in the genes encoding chloride ion channels lead to a variety of deleterious diseases in muscle, kidney, bone, and brain, including cystic fibrosis, osteoporosis, and epilepsy, and similarly their activation is supposed to be responsible for the progression of glioma in the brain and the growth of malaria-parasite in the red blood cells.