Calcium in bacteria: a solution to which problem?

Abstract

Calcium and calcium-binding proteins including those resembling calmodulin are implicated in numerous diverse processes in bacteria. These processes include chemotaxis, sporulation, virulence, the transport of sugars and proteins, phosphorylation, heat shock, the initiation of DNA replication, septation, nucleoid structure, nuclease activity and recombination, the stability of the envelope, and phospholipid synthesis and configuration. That such varied processes should have a common factor, calcium, suggests major underlying principles of calcium metabolism which have yet to be discovered.