Transcriptional Reporters for Sensing Ca2+

See below for stocks carrying constructs for transcriptional readout of Ca2+ based on either 1) NFAT or 2) Calmodulin. To browse stocks carrying fluorescent-based Ca2+ sensors see the fluor-based Ca2+ sensor page.

NFAT - The following stocks carry NFAT, deleted for the C-terminus and fused to lexA and VP16, expressed under the control of UAS. Ca2+ accumulation in activated neurons results in dephosphorylation of NFAT and translocation of the chimera to the nucleus where it can activate a lexAop-driven reporter. For more information see Masuyama et al., 2012.

Calmodulin - TRIC (Transcriptional Reporter of Intracellular Ca2+) is a expression system generated in Gao et al., 2015 designed to report interactions between calmodulin (CaM) and a calmodulin target peptide in the presence of Ca2+. The system is composed of calmodulin fused to the p65 transcriptional activation domain plus one of three calmodulin target peptides (MKII, MKIIK11A or M13) fused to a DNA-binding domain. In the presence of Ca2+, calmodulin binds to its target peptide, reconstituting a transcriptional activator that can then drive expression of a reporter. This system may be particularly useful for monitoring slowly changing neuronal responses that occur over long periods of time.

For stocks carrying fluorescent-based Ca2+ sensors see the Calcium Sensors page.

Related links   Fluorescent Proteins   GAL4   UAS   lexA   Q system