Skip to main content
. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 Mar 1.
Published in final edited form as: Bioessays. 2012 Jan 11;34(3):205–217. doi: 10.1002/bies.201100136

Figure 4.

Figure 4

Physiological profiling. A: Cells exhibiting very different expression profiles for ion transporter genes can indeed be in similar physiological states (B), based on overlapping functions for the transporters. Lack of 1:1 mapping between expression of channels/pumps and physiological state (due to compensation by other family members and post-translational gating) means that important information about cell behavior is not captured by molecular-genetic analysis without physiological profiling. Nevertheless, transcriptional data can suggest hypotheses for functional validation: the GEO database [111] can be mined for ion channel/pump profiles, such as the increased expression of the Clic6 chloride channel during HSC maturation (C), and the changes in the expression of sodium channels during progression towards melanoma in skin cells (D).