Calcium and signal transduction

Abstract

Cell signaling is an essential process in which a variety of external signals, defined as first messengers, are translated inside the cells into specific responses, which are mediated by a less numerous group of second messengers. The exchange of signals became a necessity when the transition from monocellular to pluricellular life brought with it the division of labor among the cells of the organisms: unicellular organisms do not depend on the mutual exchange of signals, as they essentially only compete with each other for nutrients. Calcium (Ca2+) was selected during evolution as second messenger, because its chemistry made it a much more flexible ligand than the other abundant cations in the primordial environment (Na+, K+, Mg2+). Ca2+ can accept binding sites of irregular geometries and is thus ideally suited to be a carrier of biological information. The Ca2+ signal has properties that set it apart from those of all other biological messengers: they will be reviewed in this contribution. Among them, the ambivalent character of the Ca2+ signal is the most important: while essential to the viability of the cells, it can also easily become a conveyor of doom.

Thermal stress altered growth performance and metabolism and induced anaemia and liver disorder in Labeo rohita

“…Lower level of calcium in serum might be due to lower amount of albumin in serum as albumin was a transporter of different hormones, vitamins, drugs and metal ions (Moman & Varacallo, 2018) including calcium (Mir, Goyal, Datta, Ikkurthi, & Pal, 2016). Calcium is an important second messenger within cellular signalling system (Fedrizzi, Lim, & Carafoli, 2008) and involves in different important biological processes (Hunn, 1985;Liang et al, 2018); therefore, lower concentration in serum could interfere with stress response processes in fish Lower amount of cholesterol (Zhu et al, 2018) and albumin (Carraro et al, 2016) in serum might be due to lower production in liver.…”

Effects of recombinant human lactoferrin on calcium signaling and functional responses of human neutrophils

“…In addition, treatment of cells with 2 μM thapsigargin (an inhibitor of sarco/endoplasmic reticulum Ca 2+ -ATPase [38]) induced Ca 2+ increase on 105 ± 31 nM due to its leakage from the ER, however, no response to rhLf was observed in this case. As the elevation of cytoplasmic calcium can be due to Ca 2+ -release from the intracellular depot and/or Ca 2+ -entry from the extracellular medium [39,40], we suggest that binding rhLf to human neutrophils and subsequent transmembrane signaling may involve the store-operated Ca 2+ entry (SOCE) pathway and Ca 2+ ATP-powered P-pumps of the endoplasmic reticulum [41,42]. To gain more insights into this regulation, we used a pharmacological approach and treated neutrophils with drugs affecting specific Ca 2+ -channels or signal transduction enzymes.…”

Unraveling the Connections between Calreticulin and Myeloproliferative Neoplasms via Calcium Signalling

“…Calcium also acts in cell-to-cell communication and any change in the calcium level would trigger a response [62] in controlling a spectrum of cellular processes through calcium signal transduction [63]. Calcium ions are also essential for protein function as they can change protein shape and electrostatic charge distribution [18].…”