Analytic description of stochastic calcium-signaling periodicity.

Calcium release is an important tool for cellular signaling processes where chemical signals are converted into spatio-temporal variations of intracellular calcium concentration. We investigated the temporal behavior of a single cluster of inositol-(1,4,5)-triphosphate receptor (IP3R)-I channels and will present an analytic approach to obtain the spectrum of the calcium signal within the cluster. We compare these results with stochastic simulations and obtain an intermediate number of channels per cluster for optimal signaling periodicity.