The Alpha group are small and recently discovered group of aPKs that appear to have been lost secondarily from most fungal lineages. The Alpha aPKs include the founding members elongation factor 2 kinase and Dictyostelium myosin heavy chain kinase. Mammals typically have 6 members, including two channel-kinases, novel signalling molecules that contain an alpha-kinase domain fused to an ion channel. In human cells, the closely-related ion channel-kinases TRPM6 and TRPM7 are not functionally redundant but complementary, and are essential components of vertebrate homeostasis regulation. The three-dimensional structure of TRPM7/ChaK1 showed that Alpha kinases have a fold similar to ePKs and that most structural elements and the position of key amino acid residues important for catalysis are very similar in Alpha kinases and ePKs.