As we all know calcium concentration is important in cytosol for regulating many cellular functions like activation and inactivation of many transcription factors like NFAT and many other protein/enzymes like myosin light-chain kinase and all.
I am curious about why calcium is always important for vesicle docking, fusion, and exocytosis?
Hello Manish,
This is an area of neuroscience that has been widely studied, you may want to start by reading these reviews on the subject (and references therein):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23060190
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15217342
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18817990
For Ca2+ dependent exocytosis sensor proteins such as synaptotagmin I and Doc2b activated by Ca2+ promote fusion through membrane bending and enhancing interactions between vesicle and target membrane SNARE.
Calcium is a divalent ion which facilitates bridging between vesicles, etc
Hello Marte how it could be possible...?
Mg also divalent but not they are facilitate vesicles fusion in exocytosis...
Hello Manish,
This is an area of neuroscience that has been widely studied, you may want to start by reading these reviews on the subject (and references therein):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23060190
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15217342
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18817990
Hello Manish,
Friends have already provided valuable insight into your question. May I add:
Inorganic particles including divalent cations
are an important class of carriers for bioactive
molecules. They have excellent storage stability,
withstand microbial contamination and are inexpensive.
12 These inorganic compounds have various
biomedical applications such as vaccination,
drug delivery, and gene therapy.13 Of the various
inorganic particles used, calcium salts have been
extensively developed and studied as a delivery
system because they are biocompatible and
physiologically acceptable.14 Calcium phosphate
is considered to be the model compound for the
inorganic constituent of bone and teeth. Blood
serum is considered to be an aqueous solution
supersaturated with respect to calcium phosphate.
(See attached paper)
There are two main reasons. First, it proved possible to evolve sensor molecules that could distinguish Ca2+ from other ions. Second, and equally important, Ca2+ is maintained at an enormous concentration gradient. Although there is typically only 2 mM outside the cell; inside its concentration is in 10s of NM - ~5 orders of magnitude difference. Thus, the transient influx of Ca2+ through ion channels results in a very abrupt, very large concentration transient - ideal for gating fast events.
For these two reasons there really is no other candidate ion (or common signalling molecule) that could serve the same gating function.
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