Edited by
David Armstrong, National Institute of Environmental Health Science, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, U.S.A.
Sandra Rossie, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S.A.
Series Editor:
Paul Greengard, Laboratory of Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience, The Rockefeller University
Angus Nairn, Laboratory of Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience, Rockefeller University, New York, U.S.A.
Shirish Shenolikar, Durham, North Carolina, U.S.A.
Description
Volume 33 reviews the current understanding of ion channel regulation by signal transduction pathways. Ion channels are no longer viewed
simply as the voltage-gated resistors of biophysicists or the ligand-gated receptors of biochemists. They have been transformed during
the past 20 years into signaling proteins that regulate every aspect of cell physiology. In addition to the voltage-gated channels, which
provide the ionic currents to generate and spread neuronal activity, and the calcium ions to trigger synaptic transmission, hormonal secretion, and muscle contraction, new gene families of ion channel proteins regulate cell migration, cell cycle progression, apoptosis,
and gene transcription, as well as electrical excitability. Even the genome of the lowly roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans encodes almost
100 distinct genes for potassium-selective channels alone. Most of these new channel proteins are insensitive to membrane potential,
yet in humans, mutations in these genes disrupt development and increase individual susceptibility to debilitating and lethal diseases.
How do cells regulate the activity of these channels? How might we restore their normal function? In Ion Channel Regulation, many of
the experts who pioneered these discoveries provide detailed summaries of our current understanding of the molecular mechanisms that
control ion channel activity.
Included in series
Advances in Second Messenger and Phosphoprotein Research
Audience:
Cell biologists, biochemists, neuroscientists, pharmacologists, and biophysicists interested in ion channels.Written specifically
to introduce non-electrophysiologists to ion channels as proteins and to introduce electrophysiologists to signal transduction pathways,
Ion Channel Regulation represents a unique professional summary of an important and exciting field and will attract and instruct anyone
interested in cell signaling through second messengers and phosphoproteins.
