Volume-sensitive outwardly rectifying (VSOR) ClVolume-sensitive outwardly rectifying (VSOR) 2 Cl Ϫ channels are ubiquitously expressed in most mammalian cells types playing a central role in maintaining normal cell volume. However, increasing evidence supports the notion that these channels participate in several other physiological processes, such as salt transport and metabolic stress, apoptosis, proliferation, migration, and cell cycle regulation (1-5). Furthermore, it has also been suggested that a failure in the activation of these channels upon cell swelling is involved in necrotic cell death (6). VSOR Cl Ϫ currents have been well studied and characterized; however, intracellular signal transduction pathways responsible for VSOR Cl Ϫ channel activation in these diverse physiological circumstances remain less understood and appear to be rather contradictory (7). The mechanisms of activation and regulation of VSOR Cl Ϫ channels comprise, depending on the cell type studied, a large variety of factors including ionic strength, macromolecular crowding, intracellular Ca 2ϩ , G proteins, arachidonic acid, and metabolites, protein kinase C, ATP release, ROS production, cytoskeleton proteins, tyrosine kinase-mediated phosphorylation of several proteins, and inactivation of phosphatases (2, 8 -14).Nonetheless, the precise roles of these swelling-induced cellular responses on the activation of VSOR Cl Ϫ channels are not completely identified. In addition, it is evident that they depend on the cell type studied (8). Participation of intracellular Ca 2ϩ in VSOR Cl Ϫ channel activation exemplifies this issue. In bovine pulmonary artery cells, hypotonicity-activated Cl Ϫ currents were found to be already maximally activated at 50 -100 nM [Ca 2ϩ ] i (15), and in Ehrlich ascites tumor cells 25 nM [Ca 2ϩ ] i was reported to be sufficient (16). In contrast, in a rat hepatoma cell line (17) (HTC), it was demonstrated that hypotonicityinduced cell swelling elicits an increase in [Ca 2ϩ ] i , which proved necessary for volume recovery (18).On the other hand, extracellular Ca 2ϩ (Ca o 2ϩ ) has been shown to be fundamental in mouse kidney proximal tubular cells (19), whereas in astrocytes the current development was found to be independent of Ca o 2ϩ (20