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Updated: Jul 13, 2026

Direct Imaging of ER Calcium with Targeted-Esterase Induced Dye Loading (TED)
Published on: May 7, 2013
Endoplasmic reticulum calcium tunnels integrate signalling in polarised cells
Ole H Petersen1, Alexei Verkhratsky
1MRC Group, Physiological Laboratory, School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Liverpool, Crown Street, Liverpool L69 3BX, UK. o.h.petersen@liv.ac.uk
Abstract:
One of the most crucial aspects of Ca(2+) signalling is the ability to generate highly localised transient elevations of the cytosolic Ca(2+) concentration at specific strategically important target sites. Inevitably this necessitates a relatively high Ca(2+) buffering power of the cytoplasm, which in turn makes movement of Ca(2+) from one part of a cell to another difficult. Nature has evolved an elegant solution to this problem by creating operational Ca(2+) tunnels through the endoplasmic reticulum. Very recently direct evidence that such tunnelling also occurs in neurons has been provided.
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