The evolution of calcium biochemistry

Abstract

The role of calcium in evolution is best understood from a perspective based on its intrinsic value as a divalent cation able to bind and precipitate inorganic and organic anions rapidly. This binding can be useful or inhibitory. Now treatment of binding or precipitation has two different interests in biological cells. The first is thermodynamic, that is the stress is on systems biology and the second is structure, that is molecular biology. In evolution both have equal weight being connected through exchange. This paper outlines first the systems biology of the evolution of calcium functions from prokaryotes to animals with brains. The calcium ion was the only good available candidate in the environment for the functions it performs. The second section of the paper describes the evolution of the proteins which allow the messenger function. We have discussed elsewhere the structure/function relationships of the proteins. Overall the evolving and increasing involvement of calcium as possibly the major control messenger of events outside cells to action inside them is an inevitable feature of the nature of ecological, that is environmental/organism, evolution.