Connexin Antibody

Gap junctional intercellular communication is thought to play a key role in development and may also be involved in epilepsy (Aronica et al., 2001) . Connexin43 forms gap-junctional channels and regulates the permeability of these gap junctions to small organic molecules. Permeability of connexin43 is known to be regulated by phosphorylation at er368 by protein kinase C (Yogo et al., 2002; Bao et al., 2004a) . Phosphorylation of Ser368 by PKC induces a conformational change of connexin43 that results in a decrease in gap junction permeability (Bao et al., 2004b) .

The antibody has been directly tested for reactivity in Western blots in rat tissues. It is anticipated that the antibody will also work with chicken, dog, finch, human, mouse, non-human primate, sheep, Xenopus and zebra fish tissues based on the fact that these species have 100% homology with the amino acid sequence used as antigen.

Aronica E, Gorter JA, Jansen GH, Leenstra S, Yankaya B, Troost D (2001) Expression of connexin 43 and connexin 32 gap-junction proteins in epilepsy-associated brain tumors and in the perilesional epileptic cortex. Acta Neuropathol (Berl) 101:449-459.

Bao X, Altenberg GA, Reuss L (2004a) Mechanism of regulation of the gap junction protein connexin 43 by protein kinase C-mediated phosphorylation. Am J Physiol Cell Physiol 286:C647-C654.

Bao X, Reuss L, Altenberg GA (2004b) Regulation of purified and reconstituted connexin 43 hemichannels by protein kinase C-mediated phosphorylation of Serine 368. J Biol Chem 279:20058-20066.