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Calcium is vital for human physiology; it mediates multiple signaling cascades, critical for cell survival, differentiation, or death both as first and as second messenger. The role of calcium as first messenger is mediated by the G-protein coupled receptor, the extracellular calcium-sensing receptor (CaSR). The CaSR is a multifaceted molecule that senses changes in the concentration of a wide variety of environmental factors including di- and trivalent cations, amino acids, polyamines, and pH. In calcitropic tissues with obvious roles in calcium homeostasis such as parathyroid, kidney, and bone it regulates circulating calcium concentrations. The germline mutations of the CaSR cause parathy...
Metabolic rate is a key ecophysiological factor determining fitness, distribution, survival and reproductive strategies of organisms. The ability to endogenously produce heat and elevate body temperature beyond ambient, has far reaching ecological implications. The diversity of thermogenic mechanisms and strategies employed throughout the animal kingdom is truly phenomenal and one of the greatest biological mysteries. Interestingly, even heat producing plants have been characterised. Over the last several decades, the oversimplified distinction between warm- and cold blooded animals has well and truly been put to rest and the terms “endo- and ectotherm” have been established. Birds and m...
"Integrative Approaches to the Molecular Physiology of Inflammation" presents contributions from the many different fields and approaches to the physiology and the molecular origins of inflammation; particularly those that may be involved in the development and evolution of diseased phenotypes. We selected among the wide scope and multiple views used to probe into the molecular origins of complex inflammatory phenotypes. This book consists of an Introductory Editorial and 6 thematic chapters encompassing 24 articles: 17 original research contributions and 7 review articles (5 reviews, 1 systematic review, and 1 minireview). Both, the research papers and the reviews provide varied and insightful approaches to different facets of inflammation with approaches ranging from general inflammation and signaling depictions deeply rooted on functional biology and physiology, to computational systems biology analyses, translational medicine, and pharmacological explorations. Model systems are also quite diverse: human subjects, mice and other mammal models, cell cultures and in silico, complex networks and database studies.
The appearance of photosynthetic organisms about 3 billion years ago increased the partial pressure of oxygen (PO2) in the atmosphere and enabled the evolution of organisms that use glucose and oxygen to produce ATP by oxidative phosphorylation. Hypoxia is commonly defined as the reduced availability of oxygen in the tissues produced by different causes, which include reduction of atmospheric PO2 as in high altitude, and secondary to pathological conditions such as sleep breathing and pulmonary disorders, anemia, and cardiovascular alterations leading to inadequate transport, delivery, and exchange of oxygen between capillaries and cells. Nowadays, it has been shown that hypoxia plays an imp...