CCN3 and calcium signaling

In this article, we review the data showing that CCN3 regulates the levels of intracellular calcium and discuss potential models that may account for the biological effects of CCN3.The control of normal cell biology, from life to death involves an extremely complex array of interconnected signaling pathways, which govern inward and outward communication. Over the two past decades, a plethora of proteins have been found to participate in these fundamental regulatory circuits. In most cases, alterations of signaling result in pathological conditions. For example, many of the proteins discovered as oncogenes and tumor suppressors in cancer cells were shown to be key signaling molecules.Signaling is pivotal to the coordinated response of cells in tissues and organs within the whole body. It is often considered that cell populations function as ？ societies ？ and that intercellular communication is pivotal to harmonious development during life and to intracellular biological modifications leading to cell death. Efficient coordination is an absolute requirement to safe functioningIt is critical to study and understand cross talking in cell population and to identify messengers that allow integrated responses. Unfortunately, very little is known presently about the processes that coordinate the various cellular signaling pathways.An increasing amount of data points to matricellular proteins as major players in global control. Members of the CCN family of proteins have recently emerged as important matricellular regulatory factors involved in both internal and external cell signaling.Bork coined the CCN acronym in 1993 [1], soon after our discovery of a new gene –nov– presently designated CCN3 [2] whose expression was enhanced in all myeloblastosis associated virus (MAV)-induced nephroblastomas [3], which represent a unique animal model of the Wilms' tumor in human [4].Analysis of the predicted primary structure of CCN3 indicated that it was structurally related to two other