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BBSRC Quota Studentship: The interplay between calcium and mitochondria in the triggering of apoptosis

Reference	BBS/E/B/0000L947
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Dr Martin Bootman
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors
Institution	Babraham Institute
Department	Babraham Institute Department
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	21,489
Status	Completed
Type	Institute Project
Start date	10/01/2002
End date	30/09/2006
Duration	57 months

Abstract

Apoptosis, or programmed cell death, is a mechanism for terminating and removing unwanted cells. This process can be initiated by a variety of factors, such as serum withdrawal and oxidative stress. Although there are many common events to apoptosis triggered by these pathways, they are not identical processes. Calcium is known to play a role in some of the early and late events of apoptosis, but whether it has the same function in all forms of apoptosis is unknown. The interplay between apoptosis and calcium signalling is bi-directional. For example, Bcl2 has been shown to prevent mitochondrial calcuim overload and subsequently abrogate mitochondrial permeability transition, whilst some caspase substrates are proteins that underlie calcium homeostasis. It is therefore clear that some forms of apoptosis require calcium signals, and that progression through apoptosis should lead to a change in cellular calcuim handling. Although calcium can provoke apoptosis, it is not clear how/when this occurs since cells generate physiological non-lethal signals almost constantly. It is likely that the effect of calcium is very much context dependent, and that it becomes a pro-apoptotic signal when calcium homeostasis is dysregulated or in the presence of other concurrent cellular signals. A central question of this project is therefore to understand how normal physiological calcium signals are subverted to cause cell death.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Closed Committee - Biochemistry & Cell Biology (BCB)
Research Topics	X – not assigned to a current Research Topic
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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