“…Essential to this process are the soluble N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor attachment protein receptor (SNARE) proteins that form the fusion complex that includes syntaxin 1A (syntaxin), SNAP25, and VAMP2 (Bennett et al, 1992a,b;Sollner et al, 1993;Bennett, 1995;Hanson et al, 1997;Hay and Scheller, 1997). Voltage-gated Ca 2ϩ channels, which mediate the influx of Ca 2ϩ that triggers release (Bajjalieh and Scheller, 1995;Bennett, 1995;Sudhof, 1995;Hanson et al, 1997;Chapman, 2002), interact physically with protein components of the fusion complex (for review, see Catterall, 2000;Spafford et al, 2003), and accumulating evidence indicates that these interactions regulate the efficacy of neurotransmitter release (Mochida et al, 1996(Mochida et al, , 1998(Mochida et al, , 2003Rettig et al, 1997;Wiser et al, 1999;Kang et al, 2002;Harkins et al, 2004). Another class of ion channels that influence exocytosis is the voltage-gated K ϩ (Kv) channels, the function of which is thought to be exerted solely and indirectly through their influence on membrane potential (Meir et al, 1999).…”