title: Calcium gradients underlying cell migration.
abstract: The calcium ion is the simplest and most versatile second messenger in biology. Harboring a myriad of calcium effector proteins, migrating cells display an exquisite multiscaled and multilayered architecture of intracellular calcium dynamics. In motile fibroblasts, for instance, there are transient calcium microdomains ('calcium flickers') of ~5 μm in diameter and 10-2000 ms in duration, a rising flicker activity gradient along the rear-to-front axis, and a shallow background calcium concentration gradient in the opposite direction. When subjected to external gradients of guidance cues, local flicker gradients are created de novo in the leading edge, which steer cells to turn in new directions as defined by the asymmetry of the flicker activity, apparently by a stochastic decision-making mechanism. These recent findings provide a glimpse into how spatiotemporally coordinated calcium gradients orchestrate cellular behavior as complex as directional movement.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Biomembrane and Membrane Biotechnology, Center for Life Sciences, the Institute of Molecular Medicine, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
authors.forename: Chaoliang
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.forename: Xianhua
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Ming
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.forename: Heping
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Cheng
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002118:Calcium / Q000378:metabolism*; D020013:Calcium Signaling; D002135:Calcium-Binding Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D002465:Cell Movement; D003593:Cytoplasm / Q000378:metabolism; D005347:Fibroblasts / Q000166:cytology / Q000378:metabolism; D006801:Humans
chemical_list: D002135:Calcium-Binding Proteins; D002118:Calcium