GJA1 and ischemia: More recently, studies performed on non-culprit arteries harvested from the rabbit model of myocardial ischemia-reperfusion provided evidence that the expression of AT1R was higher in the ischemia-reperfusion group than in the sham group, but expressions of AT1R, connexin 43, and β-tubulin were lower in the ischemic postconditioning group than in the ischemia reperfusion group [75].