Summary
Ca2+ is a ubiquitous intracellular messenger that controls diverse cellular functions but can become toxic and cause cell death. Selective control of specific targets depends on spatio-temporal patterning of the calcium signal and decoding it by multiple, tunable and often strategically positioned Ca2+ sensing elements. Ca2+ is detected by specialized motifs on proteins, which have been biochemically characterized decades ago. However, the field of Ca2+ sensing has been reenergized by recent progress in fluorescent technology, genetics and cryo-EM. These approaches exposed local Ca2+ sensing mechanisms inside organelles and at the organellar interfaces, revealed how Ca2+ binding might work to open some channels, and identified human mutations and disorders linked to a variety of Ca2+ sensing proteins. We here, attempt to place these new developments in the context of intracellular calcium homeostasis and signaling.