Functional calcium-sensing receptors in rat fibroblasts are required for activation of SRC kinase and mitogen-activated protein kinase in response to extracellular calcium.

Changes in the concentration of extracellular calcium can affect the balance between proliferation and differentiation in several cell types, including keratinocytes, breast epithelial cells, and fibroblasts. This report demonstrates that elevation of extracellular calcium stimulates proliferation-associated signaling pathways in rat fibroblasts and implicates calcium-sensing receptors (CaR) as mediators of this response. Rat-1 fibroblasts express CaR mRNA and protein and respond to known agonists of the CaR with increased IP3 production and release of intracellular calcium. Agonists of the CaR can stimulate increased c-SRC kinase activity and increased extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/mitogen-activated protein kinase activity. Both of the increases in SRC activity and mitogen-activated protein kinase activation are blocked in the presence of a nonfunctional mutant of the CaR, R796W. Proliferation of wild-type Rat-1 cells is sensitive to changes in extracellular calcium, but expression of the nonfunctional CaR mutant or inhibition of the calcium-dependent increase in SRC kinase activity block the proliferative response to calcium. These results provide evidence of a novel signal transduction pathway modulating the response of fibroblasts to extracellular calcium and imply that calcium-sensing receptors may play a role in regulating cell growth in response to extracellular calcium, in addition to their well known function in systemic calcium homeostasis.