MCU and atherosclerosis: However, the expression of mitochondrial calcium channel-related genes (MCU, MICU1, MICU2, MICU3, MCUB, SMDT1, VDAC1, VDAC2, VDAC3, SLC8B1, ITPR1, ITPR2 ITPR3) had no significant differences between normal and patients with atherosclerosis based on transcriptomic data from a database (Fig. 1j).