Twenty-week-old male SHR and WKY rats were used in this study. All protocols were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) at the Medical College of Shihezi University and ...

Gap junctions are specialised intercellular channels that facilitate direct communication between adjacent cells by allowing the regulated exchange of ions, second messengers and small metabolites.

Neuronal stem cells, originally viewed a source of spare parts that would rebuild damaged circuits, are proving instead to function more like capable paramedics, coming to the rescue of degenerating ...

The heartbeat is controlled by rapid conduction of an electrical current between heart muscle cells. Central to passage of the electrical current are structures known as gap junctions, low resistance ...

The emergence of gap junctions is a hallmark in the evolution of life from single-cell to multicellular organisms. For the first time, they enabled true social interactions between cells by allowing ...

The same kind of neurons can have completely different wiring diagrams in the rat and mouse, as mice lack intercellular molecular channels known as gap junctions, researchers at Karolinska Institutet ...

Ischemia reperfusion injury (IRI) is one of the main cause of organ dysfunction after heart attack and solid organ transplantation, and occurs frequently when the new organ comes from a deceased ...

ATP is a widely used extracellular signaling molecule. The mechanism of ATP release from cells is presently unresolved and may be either vesicular or channel-mediated. Erythrocytes release ATP in ...

Gap junction protein inhibitor protects mice from death and liver damage after hepatotoxic drug challenge. Inhibiting gap junctions in liver cells could provide a feasible strategy to preventing ...

Congenital hearing loss refers to impaired auditory function that occurs due to genetic causes. GJB2 is the gene responsible for approximately half of all cases of hereditary hearing loss. Connexin 26 ...

James Smyth, associate professor at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, embarks on a $2.7 million study to inform new ways to prevent infection-induced abnormal heart rhythms that can ...