Biological Evolution of Voltage-gated Calcium Auxiliary Subunits
Disciplines
Biology | Biotechnology | Cell Biology | Evolution
Abstract (300 words maximum)
Ion channels are critical for the maintenance of homeostasis. Due to the importance, ion channels are highly regulated and can be regulated in different ways. One of the ways to regulate ion channels is through voltage-dependence. Voltage-gated ion channels change their conformation based on the voltage. These types of ion channels also associate with auxiliary subunits to modulate the ion channel activities. Voltage-gated calcium channels are recent interest for potential therapeutic treatment of various physiological reason like pain or cancer. The auxiliary subunits of the voltage-gated calcium channels are potential targets to block the entry of calcium ions into specific cells. With a growing interest in these auxiliary subunits, a better understand of the evolution of the auxiliary subunits and their functions is called for. We used the Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) to find homologous structure for the known auxiliary subunits. In comparison to the previous studies in 2018 and 2006, each auxiliary subunit has a greater number of sequences. γ 2,3,4,5,7, and 8 subunits had 29,787 of sequences. Using the large number of sequences, we were able to develop a pedigree tree. The large number of sequences allowed for us to have a better idea of the evolution of the auxiliary subunits.
Academic department under which the project should be listed
CSM - Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology
Primary Investigator (PI) Name
Tsai-Tien Tseng
Biological Evolution of Voltage-gated Calcium Auxiliary Subunits
Ion channels are critical for the maintenance of homeostasis. Due to the importance, ion channels are highly regulated and can be regulated in different ways. One of the ways to regulate ion channels is through voltage-dependence. Voltage-gated ion channels change their conformation based on the voltage. These types of ion channels also associate with auxiliary subunits to modulate the ion channel activities. Voltage-gated calcium channels are recent interest for potential therapeutic treatment of various physiological reason like pain or cancer. The auxiliary subunits of the voltage-gated calcium channels are potential targets to block the entry of calcium ions into specific cells. With a growing interest in these auxiliary subunits, a better understand of the evolution of the auxiliary subunits and their functions is called for. We used the Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) to find homologous structure for the known auxiliary subunits. In comparison to the previous studies in 2018 and 2006, each auxiliary subunit has a greater number of sequences. γ 2,3,4,5,7, and 8 subunits had 29,787 of sequences. Using the large number of sequences, we were able to develop a pedigree tree. The large number of sequences allowed for us to have a better idea of the evolution of the auxiliary subunits.