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Simultaneous Measurement of Mitochondrial Calcium and Mitochondrial Membrane Potential in Live Cells by Fluorescent Microscopy
Published on: January 24, 2017
Trypanosomes and the solution to a 50-year mitochondrial calcium mystery
Roberto Docampo1, Julius Lukeš
1Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases and Department of Cellular Biology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30620, USA. rdocampo@uga.edu
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The ability of mitochondria to take up Ca(2+) was discovered 50 years ago. This calcium uptake, through a mitochondrial calcium uniporter (MCU), is important not only for the regulation of cellular ATP concentration but also for more complex pathways such as shaping Ca(2+) signals and the activation of programmed cell death. The molecular nature of the uniporter remained unknown for decades. By a comparative study of mitochondrial protein profiles of organisms lacking or possessing MCU, such as yeast in the former case and vertebrates and trypanosomes in the latter, two groups recently found the protein that possesses all the characteristics of the MCU. These results add another success story to the already substantial contributions of trypanosomes to mammalian biochemistry.
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