Homeostatic calcium fluxes, ER calcium release, SOCE, and calcium oscillations in cultured astrocytes are interlinked by a small calcium toolkit

We report the application of RNA-seq for molecular profiling of cultured, cortical astrocytes. Our data set is based on about 40 million unique reads per sample in four independent mRNA preparations. Cortical astrocytes are a prototypical cell model for investigating calcium signaling. For analysis of calcium fluxes, we performed direct calcium imaging in the endoplasmic reticulum and in the cytosol. We describe in our study the physiological profile of homeostatic and agonist-induced calcium fluxes. Furthermore, we show how ER calcium release shapes the cytosolic calcium signal. This transcriptome dataset was used to profile the calcium toolkit of astrocytes. The data suggest that a small number of calcium signaling-related proteins mediate calcium homeostasis in astrocytes. Overall design: Profiling of calcium signalling components that are expressed in cultured cortical astrocytes of the mouse based on 4 biological replicates.