Medical research

Secret alter ego of well-known protein fights leaky blood vessels

With every heartbeat, a gallon and a half of blood pulses through the body's network of veins and arteries. The force of that blood flow helps keep the cells that line the blood vessels, called endothelial cells, healthy; ...

Medical research

Small proteins in the heart play big role

A heartbeat is a carefully coordinated series of electrical signals led by sodium ion channels, which tell the heart when to contract and to relax. Any disruption to these signals may lead to cardiac diseases such as an irregular ...

Medical research

A model-free way to characterize polymodal ion channel gating

Two studies in The Journal of General Physiology (JGP) help pave the way for a "shortcut" model-free approach to studying activation of "polymodal" ion channels—channels that open in response to multiple stimuli.