Abstract
Cultured adrenal chromaffin cells are regarded as a suitable system for studying the regulatory mechanism of “stimulus-secretion coupling”. Indeed, the term “stimulussecretion coupling” was originally coined by Douglas and Rubin for the chromaffin cells. Although it has been suggested that calcium plays a central role in this coupling process, there still remain many important and unresolved issues on the molecular mechanisms of “stimulus-secretion coupling” such as (1) the regulatory mechanisms of the calcium uptake, (2) the mechanism by which calcium entry into the cell induces membrane fusion and exocytosis, and (3) the roles of phospholipase C and C-kinase in mediating intracellular calcium homeostasis and catecholamine secretion. In this review, roles of intracellular calcium and inositol phosphate formation in “stimulus-secretion coupling” in cultured bovine adrenal chromaffin cells are discussed, mainly on the basis of the biochemical and pharmacological differences between agonist and potassium depolarization-induced cellular responses.
