The complexity of the DEG/ENaC ion channel family revealed

DEG/ENaC ion channels share a common structure but serve many different functions. What was the ancestral function of these channels? How did their diversity develop during evolution? These are the questions that we addressed in our latest study, which has just been published in Communications Biology. The study was performed in close collaboration with the group of Yehu Moran from Hebrew University in Jerusalem and was funded by the German Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research & Development (GIF). During the study we also discovered an unanticipated role for a proton-activated ion channel in the release of cnidocytes, the typifying cell type of a whole phylum of animals.