Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases and Department of Cellular Biology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30620, USA.
Trends Parasitol. 2012 Jan;28(1):31-7. doi: 10.1016/j.pt.2011.10.007. Epub 2011 Nov 14.
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.
线粒体摄取 Ca(2+)的能力在 50 年前就被发现了。这种通过线粒体钙离子单向转运体（MCU）的钙摄取，不仅对细胞 ATP 浓度的调节很重要，而且对更复杂的途径（如塑造 Ca(2+)信号和激活程序性细胞死亡）也很重要。单向转运体的分子性质在几十年里一直不为人知。通过对缺乏或拥有 MCU 的生物体（如前者的酵母和后者的脊椎动物和锥虫）的线粒体蛋白图谱进行比较研究，最近两组研究人员发现了一种具有 MCU 所有特征的蛋白质。这些结果为锥虫对哺乳动物生物化学的已有重大贡献再添一个成功案例。
