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Prof. CHENG Heping from Peking University Visits IHB
Prof. CHENG Heping from Institute of Molecular Medicine, Peking University paid a visit to Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IHB) on Dec.09, 2014. During his visit, he gave a presentation with the title of “Researches on Calcium sparks for 20 years”.
Prof. CHENG Heping from Institute of Molecular Medicine, Peking University paid a visit toIHB on Dec.09, 2014.
The term "Calcium Sparks" was generated on Jan 12, 1993, named by Cheng and his supervisor. Since then, he has been dedicated himself to exploring the biological function and transduction mechanisms of calcium. Calcium was involved in many biological regulations such as: muscle contraction, cell proliferation and differentiation, neurotransmitter release. By combining calcium fluorescent probe (Rhod2, Flou-4) and two-photon confocal staining (confocol) technology, the whole process of calcium spark was observed in cardiomyocytes contraction: cardiac muscle action potential produce calcium sparks; the overlaps of calcium sparks form the calcium transient wave spatially and temporally; there were 10,000 calcium sparks in each cardiac muscle cell.
For the further understanding of "calcium spark", they continued to study its basic nano-molecular structure, the regulation process in calcium channels involved in its transport, release, recycle of positive and negative feedback with the new calcium binding dye GCaMP6f. Lots of outstanding results were achieved and also some innovative nouns, such as: Calcium sparklet, Calcium blink. With more researches on calcium functions in the network, a new branch was born---sparkology.
