Cover Art

“Sodium with your T”, by Adriano Senatore

“Sodium with your T” by Adriano Senatore. (a bit Salvador Dalíesque)

“T”-type channels are categorized amongst the calcium channels, but invertebrate ones, like in the pond snail, Lymnaea stagnalis can masquerade as sodium channels, by gene splicing of a unique veil of extracellular turret residues upstream of the selectivity filter in Domain II coded by Exon 12.

Adriano Senatore, Wendy Guan, Adrienne N. Boone and J. David Spafford (2013) “T-type Channels Become Highly Permeable to Sodium Ions Using an Alternate Extracellular Turret Region (S5-P) Outside the Selectivity Filter” Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Illustration of the ambiguous and bipolar nature of the orphan NALCN ion channel

Channels, Volume 2, Issue 7
The cover image illustrates the ambiguous and bipolar nature of the orphan NALCN ion channel which has features of both sodium and calcium channels and has baffled investigators. For more information, see Senatore and Spafford (2013) "A uniquely adaptable pore is consistent with NALCN being an ion sensor, Channels. 7(2):60–8.