Computing the chromaffin cell: a research-community curator/user approach to biocomputation for chromaffin cell...

Exocytosis, stimulus-secretion coupling, real-time measurements of neurosecretion, and stimulus-secretion-synthesis coupling (stimulus-transcription coupling) were all initially proposed and verified in the chromaffin cell. Detailed analysis of the molecules and pathways responsible for secretion and transsynaptic regulation of gene expression patterns in neuroendoccrine cells have been very fruitfully explored in chromaffin cells and the related PC12 pheochromocytoma cell line, using modern molecular biologcal, cellular imaging, and expression profiling techniques. The time is clearly at hand for a concerted bioinformatics approach to acquiring and synthesizing electrophysiological, biochemical, and proteomic/genomic data on the chromaffin cell. Accelerating this process will fully realize the unique attributes of the chromaffin cell as a homogeneous, accessible, fully functional model of the posttmitotic neuroendocrine cell.