Volume 26, No 12, Dec 2016

ISSN: 1001-0602 
EISSN: 1748-7838 2018 
impact factor 17.848* 
(Clarivate Analytics, 2019)

Volume 26 Issue 12, December 2016: 1271-1272

RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

Calcium channel structures come of age

Jian Yang¹

¹Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA Correspondence: Jian Yang, E-mail: jy160@columbia.edu

Voltage-gated calcium channels (Cavs) control movement, heartbeat, hormone secretion and brain activity. Malfunction of Cavs due to gene mutations or dysregulation causes cardiovascular, sensory and neurological diseases1. Cavs are targets of several blockbuster drugs1. What do Cavs look like? How do the different molecular components of Cavs intermingle? What makes a calcium channel a calcium channel? How do Cavs gate (i.e., open, close and inactivate)? Where and how do Cav drugs bind? How do disease-causing mutations alter Cav structure and function? A near-atomic resolution structure of a prototypical mammalian Cav obtained by Wu and colleagues and published recently in Nature2 (Figure 1) provides answers or clues to these interesting, important and long-pursued questions.

10.1038/cr.2016.126

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