title: The language of calcium signaling.
abstract: Ca(2+) signals are a core regulator of plant cell physiology and cellular responses to the environment. The channels, pumps, and carriers that underlie Ca(2+) homeostasis provide the mechanistic basis for generation of Ca(2+) signals by regulating movement of Ca(2+) ions between subcellular compartments and between the cell and its extracellular environment. The information encoded within the Ca(2+) transients is decoded and transmitted by a toolkit of Ca(2+)-binding proteins that regulate transcription via Ca(2+)-responsive promoter elements and that regulate protein phosphorylation. Ca(2+)-signaling networks have architectural structures comparable to scale-free networks and bow tie networks in computing, and these similarities help explain such properties of Ca(2+)-signaling networks as robustness, evolvability, and the ability to process multiple signals simultaneously.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, University of York, York, United Kingdom. ad542@york.ac.uk
authors.forename: Antony N
authors.initials: AN
authors.lastname: Dodd
authors.forename: Jörg
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kudla
authors.forename: Dale
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Sanders
mesh_terms: D002118:Calcium / Q000378:metabolism*; D020013:Calcium Signaling; D055537:Light Signal Transduction; D010940:Plant Proteins / Q000378:metabolism; D010944:Plants / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D010940:Plant Proteins; D002118:Calcium