Bioinorganic Chemistry and Applications

Research Article

The Zn- or Cu-Thionein Character of a Metallothionein Determines Its Metal Load When Synthesized in Physiological (Metal-Unsupplemented) Conditions

Table 3

Comparison of the Zn-MT complexes recovered from recombinant syntheses in Zn- and nonsupplemented culture media.


MT protein	Zn-MT species recovered when synthesized in Zn-supplemented media	Zn-MT species recovered when synthesized in nonsupplemented media	Mean Zn : MT molar ratio, when synthesized in Zn-supplemented media	Mean Zn : MT molar ratio, when synthesized in nonsupplemented media	Situation in the Zn-/Cu-thionein gradation

mMT1	Zn₇-mMT1 [7]	Zn₇-mMT1	7.3 [7]	6.95	3/16
Crs5	Zn₆-Crs5 Zn₅-Crs5 [10]	Zn₄-Crs5	5.7 [10]	4.20	10/16
MtnA	Zn₄-MtnA [11]	Apo-MtnA Zn₁-MtnA	3.5 [11]	1.70	14/16
MtnB	Zn₄-MtnB [12]	Apo-MtnB	3.7 [12]	2.04	15/16

In this work, only major species identified by ESI-MS are indicated.
In this work, the mean Zn : MT value corresponding to the conventional ICP-AES value is indicated.
The study in [9] includes 16 MT isoforms, classified from the most extreme Zn-thionein to the most extreme Cu-thionein character.