There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.
Abstract
Substates which can last up to several seconds are found in the 100-pS channel of
the earthworm septum, a putative gap junction channel. The conductance of these substates
is highly variable from preparation to preparation, and they are found at almost every
fraction of the whole channel conductance. Another phenomenon seen in multichannel
recordings is the "conductance shift": here the current passed by several open channels
differs from an integral multiple of the current when only one channel is open. These
shifts can be modelled by 1) a resistance in series with the channel or 2) long-lived
substates. Each of these models fails in particular cases to explain either the magnitude
or direction of the shifts. It is possible that both effects are simultaneously present.