Calcium Ions: the Unexpected Key in Cellular Communication

In my previous paper I was intrigued that a certain component kept showing up in the papers I was researching. Calcium ions showed up numerous times and I had no idea how they played such an important role in a complicated process as cell communication. It honestly never occurred to me that cell communication could be effected by a difference in electrical charge.

Calcium ions were even show to be possibly related with potassium activation (Meech 1972). Potassium conductance increased in the neuron once calcium salt was injected into the cell. Electrical charge and ions play an important role in neurons and the way they communicate. However, calcium ions are also heavily present in our immune system, as they are used to initiate the human T-cell line to produce interleukin (Imboden 1985). The immune system has dedicated areas where they store calcium ions so that it can regulate cell communication and the production of proteins such as interleukin.

Calcium ions play such an important role in cell communication because they act as a secondary messenger in multicellular organisms. They are even used in plants, such as their guard cells. They can change the guard cell’s turgor (McAinish 1997).  It is even being used in nanomachine research. The nanomachines are “communicating” with cells through calcium ions and gap junctions (Nakano 2005). Gap junctions are made of connexins which are transmembrane proteins, and form into a channel that pass small molecules such as inorganic ions between neighboring cells, as seen in figure 1.

The tubes represent the connexins which transport the molecules that are represented by the circles.

Once the calcium ions pass through the gap junctions, they attach to a receiver by a selective receptor, which can then flow into the cell (Suda 2005). This alongside gap junctions are becoming the basis for a molecular communication system and can help pave the future for nanomachines in health and medicine.

Sources

Meech, R.w. “Intracellular Calcium Injection Causes Increased Potassium Conductance in Aplysia Nerve Cells.” Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part A: Physiology 42.2 (1972): 493-99.

Imboden, J. B. “Transmembrane Signalling by the T Cell Antigen Receptor. Perturbation of the T3-antigen Receptor Complex Generates Inositol Phosphates and Releases Calcium Ions from Intracellular Stores.” Journal of Experimental Medicine 161.3 (1985): 446-56.

Mcainsh, Martin R., Colin Brownlee, and Alistair M. Hetherington. “Calcium Ions as Second Messengers in Guard Cell Signal Transduction.” Physiol Plant Physiologia Plantarum 100.1 (1997): 16-29.

Nakano, T., T. Suda, M. Moore, R. Egashira, A. Enomoto, and K. Arima. “Molecular Communication for Nanomachines Using Intercellular Calcium Signaling.” 5th IEEE Conference on Nanotechnology, 2005. (n.d.): n. pag.

Suda, Tatsuya, Michael Moore, Tadashi Nakano, Ryota Egashira, and Akihiro Enomoto. “Exploratory Research on Molecular Communication between Nanomachines.” GECCO ’05 (2005): n. pag.