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).
