Historical review: Mitochondria and calcium: ups and downs of an unusual relationship

The discovery of Ca2+ transport by mitochondria is conventionally credited to De Luca and Engstrom, and Vasington and Murphy, who showed in 1961-1962 that Ca2+ was taken up by isolated mitochondria using respiratory or ATIP energy. However, contributions had already appeared in the 1950s showing - albeit indirectly - that isolated mitochondria bound Ca2+ actively. Somehow, however, these contributions failed to attract the attention that they undoubtedly deserved. The 1961-1962 findings started the ball rolling, initiating a topic that was to have a peculiar oscillatory history. It went from peaks of great enthusiasm to valleys of essential neglect, and from there to a final (hopefully permanent) robust revival.