Functions
The section "Areas of Electrical Coupling" reflects the circumstances of earliest discovery of gap junctions and their function in allowing the transmission electrical impulses among cells at levels that elicit responses from their neighboring cells. The transmission of a nerve impulse and the contraction of muscle are relatively easily detected and quantified experimentally. "Areas of Electrical Coupling" also touches upon the retinal gap junctions which could be seen as specialist nerve cells. Many new functions for gap junctions have been uncovered since those early years.
Read more about this topic: Gap Junction
Famous quotes containing the word functions:
“Mark the babe
Not long accustomed to this breathing world;
One that hath barely learned to shape a smile,
Though yet irrational of soul, to grasp
With tiny finger—to let fall a tear;
And, as the heavy cloud of sleep dissolves,
To stretch his limbs, bemocking, as might seem,
The outward functions of intelligent man.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“One of the most highly valued functions of used parents these days is to be the villains of their children’s lives, the people the child blames for any shortcomings or disappointments. But if your identity comes from your parents’ failings, then you remain forever a member of the child generation, stuck and unable to move on to an adulthood in which you identify yourself in terms of what you do, not what has been done to you.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)