Calcium biological systems

The interest in colour indicators has recently increased as they are used for the direct determination of pH (acid-base indicators) and free calcium ions (fluorescent derivatives based on the calcium chelator EGTA as metallochromic indicators) in biological systems at cellular level. 

As mentioned earlier, biological systems have developed optimized strategies to design materials with elaborate nanostructures [6]. A straightforward approach to obtaining nanoparticles with controlled size and organization should therefore rely on so-called biomimetic syntheses where one aims to reproduce in vitro the natural processes of biomineralization. In this context, a first possibility is to extract and analyze the biological (macro)-molecules that are involved in these processes and to use them as templates for the formation of the same materials. Such an approach has been widely developed for calcium carbonate biomimetic synthesis [13]. In the case of oxide nanomaterials, the most studied system so far is the silica shell formed by diatoms [14]. 

CaMo508 provides a link to calcium channels in biological systems. This mixed oxide contains Mo/O columns, of which groups of four define channels in which the Ca2+ cations reside. There is no clearly defined coordination number for these cations Ca-0 distances range from 2.39 A upwards, there being ten oxygens at fairly regularly spaced distances up to 3.04 A from the Ca2+ (117). 

The hydrated cation Ca2+aq is of prime importance to the aqueous solution chemistry of calcium, and to most of its various roles in biological systems. The relation between lattice energy and hydration energies of the constituent ions determine solubilities, the size of the hydrated cation controls selectivity and the passage of ions through channels, and the work required to remove some or all of the water of hydration is relevant both to... 

Table XI (346-390) lists a number of calcium-binding proteins and indicates very succinctly their role in biological systems. This table both illustrates the range of functions of calcium-binding proteins and serves to introduce those which appear subsequently in this chapter. The structures and functions of particularly important calcium-binding proteins such as calmodulin, parvalbumin, and troponin C are described in standard texts on biochemistry. The minimal Table XI entry for the particularly important calmodulins is amplified in the next paragraph. Table XI provides a sprinkling of references to enable readers to gain entry into the literature, for these and for most of the less-familiar species.

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