Probing a reduced equation for intracellular calcium dynamics.

A.C. VENTURA, L. BRUNO, S. PONCE DAWSON.

PHYSICA A - STATISTICAL AND THEORETICAL PHYSICS

Año: 2004 vol. 342 p. 371 - 375

0378-4371

Intracellular calcium plays a crucial role in many biological processes. Optical techniquesprovide a relatively non-invasive method by which calcium signals can be studied. However,obtaining quantitative information on the calcium currents that give rise to a particular image isnot straightforward due to the presence of buffers and pumps that affect the calcium dynamics.We have recently developed a novel method to determine the calcium release fuxes that underliea fuorescent image, which proved to be pretty accurate in both numerically and experimentallygenerated images (Ventura et al., to be published). The method assumes that a certain numberof perturbative terms is enough to capture the way in which the various intracellular processeswhose details are unknown affect calcium dynamics. In this paper we investigate the validity ofthis ansatz using numerical simulations.