Thousands of imaginative scientists, over more than a century, have revealed the fascinating story of intracellular calcium, through a pathway of ingenious invention and discovery.

Intracellular Calcium, the definitive book on this topic, reveals:

• The pathway of discovery and invention of intracellular calcium over more than 100 years.
• The evidence for intracellular calcium as a universal switch in all animal, plant, fungal and microbial cells
• How the components required for calcium signalling are named and classified.
• The ingenious technology, which has been developed to study intracellular calcium.
• How calcium is regulated inside cells and how it works to trigger an event.
• The role of intracellular calcium in disease, cell injury and cell death.
• How many drugs work through the calcium signalling system.
• How intracellular calcium is involved in the action of many natural toxins.
• How the intracellular calcium signalling system has evolved over 4000 million years, showing why it was crucial to the origin of life.

A key principle presented throughout the book is the molecular variation upon which the intracellular calcium signalling system depends. This variation occurs within the same cell type and between cells with different functions, providing the invisible matrix upon which Darwin and Wallace's Natural Selection depends.

Featuring more than 100 figures, including detailed chemical structures as well as pictures of key pioneers in the field, a bibliography of more than 1500 references, as well as detailed subject and organism indices, this definitive work provides a unique source of scholarship for teachers and researchers in the biomedical sciences and beyond.

Professor Anthony K. Campbell is Professor in Medical Biochemistry, Cardiff University. He obtained an exhibition at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and then a first class degree in Natural Sciences, and a PhD in Biochemistry at Cambridge University. He moved to Cardiff as lecturer in Medical Biochemistry at the then Welsh National School of Medicine in 1970, and the Professor in Medical Biochemistry, followed by Professor in the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at Cardiff University. He has studied intracellular calcium as a cell regulator for over 40 years, pioneering the application of Ca²⁺-activated photoproteins to measure free Ca²⁺ in live animal, plant, bacterial and archaeal cells. He is a world authority on bioluminescence, developing the use of genetically engineered bioluminescence to measure chemical processes in live cells. One of his inventions, using chemiluminescence, is now used in several hundred million clinical tests per year worldwide, was awarded the Queen's Anniversary Prize in 1998, and was selected by the Eureka project of Universities UK in 2006 as one of the top hundred inventions and discoveries from UK Universities in the past fifty years. For the past 15 years his research focus has been lactose and food intolerance, which has led to a new hypothesis on the cause of irritable bowel syndrome, and the mystery illness which afflicted Charles Darwin for 50 years, but was never cured. He is now investigating the relevance of this hypothesis to the current diabetic epidemic, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease. He has published 9 books, and over 250 internationally peer-reviewed papers on intracellular calcium, bioluminescence, lactose and food intolerance. Several of his patents have been exploited throughout the world.