Figure 1.

Expression analysis of Ca_v2.3 after SDS‐polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and Western blot. Microsomal membranes were isolated from the retina and the neocortex of Ca_v2.3 null mutants and wild‐type littermates.12 Lane 1: 49 μg protein from Ca_v2.3‐deficient retina (−|−). Lane 3: 34 μg protein from Ca_v2.3‐competent retinae (+|+). Microsomal membranes from murine neocortices of Ca_v2.3‐deficient mice were used as negative (−|−) and from Ca_v2.3‐competent mice as positive controls (+|+), respectively. Lane 5: 32 μg protein from Cav2.3‐competent neocortical membranes. Lane 6 and 8, 72 μg of neocortical microsomal protein from Ca_v2.3‐competent or Ca_v2.3‐deficient mice, respectively. In lanes 2, 4, and 7, no protein was loaded. Peptide‐directed antibodies directed against a common epitope in all Ca_v2.3 splice variants (anti‐a1E‐com) were used as the primary antibody during Western blot analysis.9 Note that the predicted size of the full length Cav2.3 protein (262 kDa) is marked by the arrowheads