Issues

JGP study reveals that visual perception of high-frequency flickers requires signaling by the tissue polarity protein FAT3 in retinal bipolar cells.

Tao and Corry (2025) used metadynamics, an enhanced sampling method to identify and classify Na_v channel blockers.

Phan and Fitzsimons develop a new mathematical model of muscle contraction that explores cooperative mechanisms in small (murine) and large (porcine) mammalian myocardium.

Gupta et al. reconcile a disconnect between structural and functional data regarding stoichiometry of PANX1 channels and provide new insights about channel activation.

This review provides comprehensive insights into α-actinin isoforms and their role in cardiovascular disease, specifically macrothrombocytopaenia and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, using structural modeling approaches.

This review considers the inactivation mechanisms of Ca_V1 and Ca_V2 voltage-gated calcium channels and their role in normal physiology and pathophysiology.

Defective Ca²⁺ signaling in muscle cells is thought to play a role in Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Schreiber et al. report that voltage-activated SR Ca²⁺ release is moderately depressed in muscle fibers isolated from a rat model that reproduces the human disease well.

Tao and Corry investigate how the binding of sodium channel inhibitors to the Na_v1.5 pore using simulations reveal promiscuous, polyspecific binding at the fenestrations and central cavity. These findings shed light on diverse ways drugs inhibit the channel, offering insights for improving therapeutic development for conditions like chronic pain, epilepsy, and cardiac arrhythmias.

Köster et al. characterize eight sodium channel subtypes relevant to nociception and use a computer model to simulate the response of two types of nociceptive nerve fibers. Their results provide a better understanding of Na_v1.7 and Na_v1.9 and have implications for future mechanistic studies and disease modelling.

We have created a mathematical model to provide a better understanding of the contribution of contractile and regulatory proteins to the regulation of contraction of mammalian cardiac muscle.

Elhanafy et al. show that identical mutations at equivalent positions in VSDs of cardiac sodium channels can lead to diverse functional effects. Using molecular dynamics simulations, they uncover VSD-specific structural dynamics and gating-pore conformations that explain these differential impacts, advancing our understanding of sodium channelopathies.

This study reports that the loss of FAT3, a multifunctional tissue polarity protein, acts via its intracellular domain and retinal bipolar cells to affect mouse electroretinography (ERG) responses and visual perception of high-frequency flickers.

Picollo and Pusch present ALLIN (Annotation of sequence aLignment and structuraL ProteIn visualizatioN), a web interface to generate an interactive HTML page for the simultaneous visualization of annotated protein sequences alignment and 3-D structures or homology models of the related proteins.