We’re not exactly Iron Man, but metal is intricately intertwined with our bodies. They enable important functions such as breathing, circulation, and reproduction.
For example, cobalt, found at the heart of vitamin B12, is key to the production of red blood cells, and iron allows red blood cells to transport oxygen and other important chemicals to the body’s tissues. Calcium not only strengthens bones, but also plays a role in muscle, nerve function, and blood clotting. Sodium and potassium help the heart and nerves communicate through electrical signals.
Too much exposure to metals can be harmful, as headlines about mercury-tainted Mad Hatters and lead poisoning prove. But if you don’t have enough metals in the right places, you can also get sick. This includes conditions such as iron deficiency anemia and osteoporosis. Read below to learn about National Institutes of Health-funded research on two metals that affect our health in unexpected ways.
zinc imbalance
Small amounts of zinc help ensure a proper immune response and a healthy nervous system. Zinc also regulates the function of some genes, allows many proteins to play important roles, and helps speed up the chemical reactions that keep us alive. Conversely, zinc imbalance is thought to be associated with Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, prostate cancer, and stroke.
Chemist Stephen Lippard of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology previously developed a fluorescent chemical sensor that detects trace amounts of zinc in the body, and discovered that zinc is found between two types of brain cells in the hippocampus, the learning center of the brain. My colleagues and I discovered that it helps regulate communication. memory. Their findings suggest that zinc affects memory formation and that high concentrations of zinc may contribute to epilepsy, where abnormal cellular communication triggers seizures. Scientists had previously observed that certain hippocampal cells contained zinc, but they didn’t know what role it was working there.
copper attendant
Our bodies are very careful to ensure that metals are distributed only where they are needed and in the right amounts. Like a teacher watching over students at prom, so-called “chaperone” proteins protect metals (and cells) from unwanted interactions and safely deliver metals to their cellular destinations. Problems can arise if the escort does not do their job properly.
Let’s take copper as an example. Dysfunction of chaperones that deplete copper proteins can cause limb weakness, bone growth, seizures, and frizzy, brittle hair. That’s what happens to people with Menkes syndrome. Copper locked out of cells can accumulate in the bloodstream and cause another disease, Wilson’s disease. High concentrations of copper can cause liver damage, kidney failure, coma, and death. Copper chaperones, which also transport platinum, may influence how cancer patients respond to cisplatin, a platinum-containing substance used to treat advanced testicular and ovarian cancers.
One way researchers study these copper-related diseases is by looking at the three-dimensional shape of the chaperones. For example, researchers at Northwestern University have deciphered the complex structure of a chaperone that inserts copper molecules into enzymes. Defective forms of this enzyme are thought to be associated with some inherited forms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. This structural knowledge provides insight into how chaperones function and interact with other molecules, potentially increasing scientists’ understanding of the disease and providing potential new therapeutic targets. there is.
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