Sorting the Messages

For this article, Steve Bunk interviewed Richard S. Lewis, associate professor of molecular and cellular physiology, Stanford University School of Medicine. Data from the Web of Science (ISI, Philadelphia) show that Hot Papers are cited 50 to 100 times more often than the average paper of the same type and age. R.E. Dolmetsch, K. Xu, and R.S. Lewis, "Calcium oscillations increase the efficiency and specificity of gene expression," Nature, 392:933-6, April 30, 1998. (Cited in about 170 papers since publication) Just about everything binds in a cell, but some things bind more than others. Take calcium. As a messenger it's multipotent, capable of sending signals along numerous transcriptional pathways. When free calcium in the cytosol increases beyond normal levels, many events can occur. In such a condition, how does the cell determine which pathways to activate? Different frequencies of cytosolic calcium oscillations long have been thought to contribute to signaling ...