Emerging roles of connexin hemichannels in gastrointestinal and liver pathophysiology

Figure 1 Molecular architecture of gap junctions. Gap junctions are grouped in plaques at the cell membrane surface and are composed of twelve connexin proteins organized as two hexameric hemichannels. The connexin structure consists of four membrane-spanning domains, two extracellular loops, one cytoplasmic loop, one cytoplasmic amino tail and one cytoplasmic carboxy tail.