PMU-Autor/inn/en
Jakab MartinAbstract
Cell volume alterations are involved in numerous cellular events like epithelial transport, metabolic processes, hormone secretion, cell migration, proliferation and apoptosis. Above all it is a need for every cell to counteract osmotic cell swelling in order to avoid cell damage. The defence against excess cell swelling is accomplished by a reduction of the intracellular osmolarity by release of organic- or inorganic osmolytes from the cell or by synthesis of osmotically less active macromolecules from their specific subunits. De-spite the large amount of experimental data that has accumulated, the intracellular mechanisms underlying the sensing of cell volume perturbations and the activation of volume compensatory processes, commonly summarized as regulatory volume decrease (RVD), are still only partly revealed. Moving into this field opens a complex scenario of molecular rearrangements and interactions involving intracellular messengers such as calcium, phosphoinositides and inositolphosphates as well as phosphoryla-tion/dephosphorylation processes and cytoskeletal reorganization with marked cell type- and tissue specific variations. Even in one and the same cell type significant differences regarding the activated pathways during RVD may be evident. This makes it virtually im-possible to unambigously define common sensing- and sinaling pathways used by differ-ent cells to readjust their celll volume, even if all these pathways converge to the activa-tion of comparatively few sets of effectors serving for osmolyte extrusion, including ion channels and transporters. This review is aimed at providing an insight into the manifold cellular mechanisms and alterations occuring during cell swelling and RVD.
Useful keywords (using NLM MeSH Indexing)
Animals
Arachidonic Acid/pharmacology
Autocrine Communication/physiology
Calcium/metabolism
Cell Membrane/physiology
Cell Size/physiology*
Cytoskeleton/metabolism
Eicosanoids/pharmacology
Humans
Inositol Phosphates/metabolism
Inositol Phosphates/pharmacology
Ion Channels/metabolism
Osmosis/physiology
Phosphatidylinositols/metabolism
Phosphatidylinositols/pharmacology
Phosphorylation
Receptors, Purinergic P2/metabolism
Signal Transduction/physiology*
Find related publications in this database (Keywords)
cell volume regulation