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1 Instituto de Ciencias Biomédicas, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Chile, Santiago 7; 3 Centro de Estudios Científicos, Valdivia, Chile; and 2 Department of Physiology, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90024
The
Na+/Ca2+ exchanger participates in
Ca2+ homeostasis in a variety of cells and has a key role
in cardiac muscle physiology. We studied in this work the exchanger of
amphibian skeletal muscle, using both isolated inside-out transverse
tubule vesicles and single muscle fibers. In vesicles, increasing
extravesicular (intracellular) Na+ concentration
cooperatively stimulated Ca2+ efflux (reverse mode), with
the Hill number equal to 2.8. In contrast to the stimulation of the
cardiac exchanger, increasing extravesicular (cytoplasmic)
Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]) inhibited this
reverse activity with an IC50 of 91 nM. Exchanger-mediated currents were measured at 15°C in single fibers voltage clamped at
90 mV. Photolysis of a cytoplasmic caged Ca2+ compound
activated an inward current (forward mode) of 23 ± 10 nA
(n = 3), with an average current density of 0.6 µA/µF. External Na+ withdrawal generated an outward
current (reverse mode) with an average current density of 0.36 ± 0.17 µA/µF (n = 6) but produced a minimal increase
in cytosolic [Ca2+]. These results suggest that, in
skeletal muscle, the main function of the exchanger is to remove
Ca2+ from the cells after stimulation.
intracellular calcium regulation; electrogenic ion transport; calcium fluxes; calcium permeability; plasma membrane transporters
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