March 2017
Ahmed A. Abd-Rabou
Abstract
The story of the cell commonder, calcium, reaches into all corners of the cell and controls cell proliferation, differentiation, function, and even death. The calcium-driven eukaryotic revolution is one of the great turning points in the life history, happened about two billion years later when it was converted from a dangerous killer that had to be kept out of cell into the cell master which drives the cell.
This review article will take the readers to a tour of tissues chosen to best show the calcium’s many faces (proliferator, differentiator, and killer). The reader will first see calcium and its many helpers, such as the calcium-binding signaler protein calmodulin, directing the key events of the cell cycle.
Then the tour will move onto the colon to show calcium driving the proliferation of progenitor cells, then the differentiation and ultimately the programmed death of their progeny. Moreover, the reader will learn of the striking disabling and bypassing of calcium-dependent control mechanisms during carcinogenesis.
Finally, recommendations should be taken from the underlying mechanisms through which calcium masters the persistence, progression, and even apoptosis of colorectal cancer cells. Thus, this could be of great interest for designing of chemoprevention protocols.
Keywords: Calcium, Cell cycle, Differentiation, Apoptosis, Colon cancer
