The first junior European Calcium Society meeting: calcium research across scales, Kingdoms and countries.

The first junior European Calcium Society online meeting, held October 20-21, 2020, aimed to promote junior researchers in the Ca2+ community. The meeting included four scientific sessions, covering Ca2+ research from molecular detail to whole organisms. Each session featured one invited speaker and three speakers selected based on submitted abstracts, with the overall aim of actively involving early-career researchers. Consequently, the meeting underlined the diversity of Ca2+ physiology, by showcasing research across scales and Kingdoms, as presented by a correspondingly diverse speaker panel across career stages and countries. In this meeting report, we introduce the visions of the junior European Calcium Society board and summarize the meeting content.

Cardiac pathology in neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses (NCL): More than a mere co-morbidity.

The neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses (NCLs) are mostly seen as diseases affecting the central nervous system, but there is accumulating evidence that they have co-morbidities outside the brain. One of these co-morbidities is a decline in cardiac function. This is becoming increasingly recognised in teenagers and adolescents with juvenile CLN3, but it may also occur in individuals with other NCLs. The purpose of this review is to summarise the current knowledge of the structural and functional changes found in the hearts of animal models and people diagnosed with NCL. In addition, we present evidence of structural changes that were observed in a systematic comparison of the cardiomyocytes from CLN3Δex7/8 mice.