IP₃Rs and nSOCE-Tied Together at Two Ends

All living organisms need to respond appropriately to changes in the extracellular milieu. Cellular mechanisms that enable such responses evolved in parallel with organismal complexity and intracellular Ca²⁺ signaling is one such mechanism where extracellular signals received at the cell membrane communicate with endoplasmic reticular stores of Ca²⁺, to stimulate appropriate Ca²⁺-mediated changes in cellular physiology. The amplitude and dynamics of endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-Ca²⁺ release in response to extracellular signals determines the nature of the cellular response. An understanding of how ER-Ca²⁺ channels might regulate cellular Ca²⁺ signaling in different cell types is lacking. In a recent paper, this question has been addressed in the context of neurons ( Chakraborty et al., 2023) and the implications of these new findings are discussed here.