Oscillation, activation, expression (original) (raw)

Calcium signalling

Nature volume 392, pages 863–865 (1998) Cite this article

Increased concentrations of free Ca2+ within the cytosol of living cells lead to the activation of arrays of both rapid and sustained events. These, and the events that cause them, can vary considerably under different conditions. As well as stable increases, most cells — both excitable and non-excitable — can develop oscillations in the concentration of cytosolic Ca2+. These trains of Ca2+ spikes occur at much lower frequencies than those of membrane action potentials. But how do cells interpret these rises in the concentration of Ca2+?

Oscillations in the concentration of cytosolic Ca2+ have attracted considerable attention, and hypotheses of frequency coding were proposed a decade ago1. But the experimental evidence has remained weak2, and the physiological significance of the phenomenon is still questioned. On pages 933 and 936 of this issue, however, Dolmetsch et al.3 and Li et al.4 report highly original experiments in which oscillations were generated by new procedures, bypassing the complexities of cell heterogeneity and activation of surface receptors. The results clearly show that oscillations and their frequencies can be specific for gene activation, not only in terms of efficiency, but also of selectivity. Nothing of this kind has ever been demonstrated before, and these reports open a new field in Ca2+ signalling.

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Figure 1: New procedures for generating homogeneous oscillations in the concentration of cytosolic Ca2+.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. the Department of Pharmacology, University of Milan, and at DIBIT, Scientific Institute San Raffaele, Via Olgettina 58, 20132, Milan, Italy
    Jacopo Meldolesi

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Meldolesi, J. Oscillation, activation, expression.Nature 392, 863–865 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/31804

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