Peptide Neurotoxins That Affect Voltage-Gated Calcium Channels: A Close-Up on ω-Agatoxins

Peptide Neurotoxins that Affect Voltage-Gated Calcium Channels: A Close-Up on ω-Agatoxins

Peptide neurotoxins found in animal venoms have gained great interest in the field of neurotransmission. As they are high affinity ligands for calcium, potassium and sodium channels, they have become useful tools for studying channel structure and activity. Peptide neurotoxins represent the clinical potential of ion-channel modulators across several therapeutic fields, especially in developing ...

Spider Neurotoxins Targeting Voltage-gated Sodium Channels !

Voltage-Gated Calcium Channels

Voltage-gated calcium channels.

Voltage-gated calcium (Ca(2+)) channels are key transducers of membrane potential changes into intracellular Ca(2+) transients that initiate many physiological events. There are ten members of the voltage-gated Ca(2+) channel family in mammals, and they serve distinct roles in cellular signal transduction. The Ca(V)1 subfamily initiates contraction, secretion, regulation of gene expression, int...

Neurotoxins and Their Binding Areas on Voltage-Gated Sodium Channels

Voltage-gated sodium channels (VGSCs) are large transmembrane proteins that conduct sodium ions across the membrane and by doing so they generate signals of communication between many kinds of tissues. They are responsible for the generation and propagation of action potentials in excitable cells, in close collaboration with other channels like potassium channels. Therefore, genetic defects in ...