Ion Channels: Keeping a lid on calcium uptake
- University of California, San Francisco, United States
Mitochondria are often referred to as the “powerhouses” of eukaryotic cells because they supply most of the energy that the cells need. In the 1960s it was discovered that active mitochondria, when isolated from the cell and studied “in a test-tube”, accumulate large quantities of calcium ions (Ca2+). However, the importance of this phenomenon was not immediately clear. Later, in the 1990s, it was revealed that mitochondria inside eukaryotic cells also take up Ca2+ ions (Rizzuto et al., 1998).
The uptake of Ca2+ by mitochondria stimulates certain enzymes to regulate energy production in order to match the cell’s activity. However, if too much Ca2+ enters, the mitochondria can malfunction which often kills the cell. The uptake of Ca2+ by mitochondria must therefore be tightly controlled. Now, in eLife, Christopher Miller and colleagues at Brandeis University – including Ming-Feng Tsai and Charles Phillips as joint first authors – report how this control might be achieved (Tsai et al., 2016).
Each mitochondrion has an inner membrane and an outer membrane. Small molecules and ions (including Ca2+ ions) can pass freely through the outer membrane, but not the inner one. The transport of Ca2+ through the inner membrane depends on an ion channel called the “mitochondrial Ca2+ uniporter” (or MCU channel for short). This channel is the most selective Ca2+ channel currently known (Kirichok et al., 2004).
The MCU channel is actually a protein complex made from multiple subunits. The Ca2+ ions pass through a pore-forming subunit (Baughman et al., 2011; De Stefani et al., 2011) that spans the inner membrane and is surrounded by five other subunits. These other subunits regulate the pore-forming subunit, but how they do this and how they are all assembled into the channel complex are still topics of active debate.
The pore-forming subunit plus two of the five regulatory subunits (proteins named EMRE and MICU1) form what can be referred to as the “core functional unit of the MCU” (Perocchi et al., 2010; Sancak et al., 2013). This stripped-down version of the complex acts much like the full channel and can be used to explain how mitochondria take up Ca2+. Tsai, Phillips and colleagues used biochemical assays to determine how these three subunits fit together within the core functional unit. They demonstrated that EMRE interacts with the pore-forming subunit via domains that span the inner membrane. They also found that the subunits could not form a working channel without this interaction. Furthermore, they showed that MICU1 binds to EMRE at the outer surface of the inner mitochondrial membrane (Figure 1).
Figure 1
The core functional unit of the MCU channel complex.
The core functional unit spans the inner membrane of a mitochondrion and consists of three subunits: the pore-forming subunit (green), MICU1 (blue) and EMRE (red). Tsai, Phillips and colleagues show that the pore-forming subunit and EMRE interact within the inner membrane via their transmembrane domains. They also show that a negatively charged domain of EMRE (red circle) anchors MICU1 to the cytosolic face of the inner mitochondrial membrane. The concentration of calcium ions ([Ca2+]) in the cytosol of a resting cell is typically about ~100 nM (left). At this concentration, MICU1 does not bind to Ca2+ ions (gray circles), and MICU1 blocks the pore to prevent the flow of Ca2+ ions. In contrast, when the concentration of Ca2+ in the cytosol is elevated (right), MICU1 binds to two Ca2+ ions and dissociates from the pore. This allows Ca2+ ions to flow into the mitochondria (gray arrows).
Combined with relevant data from other groups (Mallilankaraman et al., 2012; Csordás et al., 2013; Patron et al., 2014), the results of Tsai, Phillips and colleagues provide a glimpse of how the MCU channel complex might work at the molecular level. EMRE anchors MICU1 near the pore-forming subunit, and MICU1 then blocks the pore when the Ca2+concentration in the cytosol is at its resting level. This stops Ca2+ ions from flowing into the mitochondria. However, when the Ca2+ concentration in the cytosol increases, Ca2+ ions bind to MICU1and cause it to dissociate from the pore to allow other Ca2+ ions to pass through (Figure 1). Thus MICU1 serves as a Ca2+-sensitive “lid” on the MCU channel complex, which closes and opens the channel in response to changes in the Ca2+ concentration in the cytosol. Notably, the pore-forming subunit cannot work without EMRE (Sancak et al., 2013). Thus it might be EMRE, and not the pore forming subunit, that controls how many of the MCU channels are active in various tissues.
Now that we know how the MCU core functional unit is assembled, the stage is set to explore how the structure of the MCU channel relates to its function. This will bring us closer to understanding the phenomenon of Ca2+ uptake by mitochondria and how it could be affected via drugs to control energy production in cells and cell death.
References
Article and author information
Author details
Publication history
- Version of Record published: June 3, 2016 (version 1)
- Version of Record updated: June 7, 2016 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2016, Garg et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 1,558
- views
-
- 275
- downloads
-
- 2
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Ion Channels: Keeping a lid on calcium uptake
eLife 5:e17293.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.17293
Further reading
-
- Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
- Evolutionary Biology
Stramenopiles form a clade of diverse eukaryotic organisms, including multicellular algae, the fish and plant pathogenic oomycetes, such as the potato blight Phytophthora, and the human intestinal protozoan Blastocystis. In most eukaryotes, glycolysis is a strictly cytosolic metabolic pathway that converts glucose to pyruvate, resulting in the production of NADH and ATP (Adenosine triphosphate). In contrast, stramenopiles have a branched glycolysis in which the enzymes of the pay-off phase are located in both the cytosol and the mitochondrial matrix. Here, we identify a mitochondrial carrier in Blastocystis that can transport glycolytic intermediates, such as dihydroxyacetone phosphate and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate, across the mitochondrial inner membrane, linking the cytosolic and mitochondrial branches of glycolysis. Comparative analyses with the phylogenetically related human mitochondrial oxoglutarate carrier (SLC25A11) and dicarboxylate carrier (SLC25A10) show that the glycolytic intermediate carrier has lost its ability to transport the canonical substrates malate and oxoglutarate. Blastocystis lacks several key components of oxidative phosphorylation required for the generation of mitochondrial ATP, such as complexes III and IV, ATP synthase, and ADP/ATP carriers. The presence of the glycolytic pay-off phase in the mitochondrial matrix generates ATP, which powers energy-requiring processes, such as macromolecular synthesis, as well as NADH, used by mitochondrial complex I to generate a proton motive force to drive the import of proteins and molecules. Given its unique substrate specificity and central role in carbon and energy metabolism, the carrier for glycolytic intermediates identified here represents a specific drug and pesticide target against stramenopile pathogens, which are of great economic importance.
-
- Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Protein phosphorylation is one of the major molecular mechanisms regulating protein activity and function throughout the cell. Pannexin 1 (PANX1) is a large-pore channel permeable to ATP and other cellular metabolites. Its tyrosine phosphorylation and subsequent activation have been found to play critical roles in diverse cellular conditions, including neuronal cell death, acute inflammation, and smooth muscle contraction. Specifically, the non-receptor kinase Src has been reported to phosphorylate Tyr198 and Tyr308 of mouse PANX1 (equivalent to Tyr199 and Tyr309 of human PANX1), resulting in channel opening and ATP release. Although the Src-dependent PANX1 activation mechanism has been widely discussed in the literature, independent validation of the tyrosine phosphorylation of PANX1 has been lacking. Here, we show that commercially available antibodies against the two phosphorylation sites mentioned above—which were used to identify endogenous PANX1 phosphorylation at these two sites—are nonspecific and should not be used to interpret results related to PANX1 phosphorylation. We further provide evidence that neither tyrosine residue is a major phosphorylation site for Src kinase in heterologous expression systems. We call on the field to re-examine the existing paradigm of tyrosine phosphorylation-dependent activation of the PANX1 channel.
