title: Relating a calcium indicator signal to the unperturbed calcium concentration time-course.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Optical indicators of cytosolic calcium levels have become important experimental tools in systems and cellular neuroscience. Indicators are known to interfere with intracellular calcium levels by acting as additional buffers, and this may strongly alter the time-course of various dynamical variables to be measured.
  
  
  RESULTS
  By investigating the underlying reaction kinetics, we show that in some ranges of kinetic parameters one can explicitly link the time dependent indicator signal to the time-course of the calcium influx, and thus, to the unperturbed calcium level had there been no indicator in the cell.
authors.affiliation: Max-Planck-Institute of Neurobiology, Martinsried, Germany. borst@neuro.mpg.de
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Borst
authors.forename: Henry D I
authors.initials: HD
authors.lastname: Abarbanel
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002118:Calcium / Q000032:analysis* / Q000378:metabolism*; D003600:Cytosol / Q000737:chemistry; D006801:Humans; D007700:Kinetics; D008433:Mathematics
chemical_list: D002118:Calcium