Abstract
Saliva is secreted from the acinar cells of the salivary glands, using mechanisms that are similar to other types of water-transporting epithelial cells. Using a combination of theoretical and experimental techniques, over the past 20 years we have continually developed and modified a quantitative model of saliva secretion, and how it is controlled by the dynamics of intracellular calcium. However, over approximately the past 5 years there have been significant developments both in our understanding of the underlying mechanisms and in the way these mechanisms should best be modelled. Here, we review the traditional understanding of how saliva is secreted, and describe how our work has suggested important modifications to this traditional view. We end with a brief description of the most recent data from living animals and discuss how this is now contributing to yet another iteration of model construction and experimental investigation.
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Acknowledgements
Since this review appears in a special volume to mark the 90th birthday of Jim Murray, it would be remiss of me (J.S.) not to acknowledge the enormous debt I owe to Jim. Jim has been, for my entire career, an inspiration to me. Not just to me, of course; Jim has been a giant of mathematical biology for decades now, and I am only one of the many who has read, and reread, his book “Mathematical Biology” for both duty and pleasure. It is absolutely fitting that this review, dedicated as it is to a series of results in which it is not always easy to decide whether the modelling stimulated the experiment, or vice versa, appears in a volume dedicated to Jim. I suspect (and hope) he will like this approach, similar as it is to his own. He is, after all, the shoulders I stand on. And, even then, I’m not entirely certain I see any further than he does. This work was supported by NIH Grant 2R01DE019245, and by the Marsden Fund of the Royal Society of New Zealand.
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Sneyd, J., Vera-Sigüenza, E., Rugis, J. et al. Calcium Dynamics and Water Transport in Salivary Acinar Cells. Bull Math Biol 83, 31 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11538-020-00841-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11538-020-00841-9