Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 3
Imaging of gap junctions and hemichannels.
Top right panel
(six images) shows gap junc-
tional plaques, imaged at cytoplasmic face and, after force dissection, extracellular face, with
molecular resolution.
Top left
shows schematic and (four images) reconstituted hemichannels from
bilayer to a single open and closed channel.
Bottom half
shows phase images (A-D) and energy
maps (
bottom left
) of hemichannels in open and closed states.
Bottom right
section shows differ-
ence in interfacial energy of open and closed channels and a model pointing toward the role of
hydrophobic interactions. For details, see John et al. (
1997
) and Thimm et al. (
2005
)
