Copper resistance mechanisms are crucial for many pathogenic bacteria, including Mycobacterium tuberculosis, during infection because the innate immune system utilizes copper ions to kill bacterial intruders. Despite several studies detailing responses of mycobacteria to copper, the pathways by which copper ions cross the mycobacterial cell envelope are unknown. Deletion of porin genes in Mycob...

Wilson disease (WD) is a severe hepato-neurologic disorder that affects primarily children and young adults. WD is caused by mutations in ATP7B and subsequent copper overload. However, copper levels alone do not predict severity of the disease. We demonstrate that temporal and spatial distribution of copper in hepatocytes may play an important role in WD pathology. High resolution synchrotron-b...

background: to determine the protective impact of efficient serum copper concentration on bmd in women and to asses its impression on bone. methods: six hundred healthy women through a national project in iran, imos, were selected via a cluster random sam pling and enrolled the study. they were divided to pre menopausal (404/600, 67.7% of total) and post menopausal (190/600, 32%of total) groups...

Acinetobacter baumannii is an important emerging pathogen that is capable of causing many types of severe infection, especially in immunocompromised hosts. Since A. baumannii can rapidly acquire antibiotic resistance genes, many infections are on the verge of being untreatable, and novel therapies are desperately needed. To investigate the potential utility of copper-based antibacterial strateg...

The association of copper with cardiovascular disease and a possible involvement of copper in the metabolism of cholesterol prompted the study on hypercholesterolemia mediated by copper deficiency. Copper deficient rats were found to exhibit a highly significant cholesterolemia (P less than 0.001), and plasma cholesterol showed a significant correlation with hepatic copper concentration (P less...

Bacterial contamination of touch surfaces poses a serious threat for public health. The use of bactericidal surface materials, such as copper and its alloys, might constitute a way to aid the use of antibiotics and disinfectants, thus minimizing the risk of emergence and spread of multiresistant germs. The survival of Escherichia coli on metallic copper surfaces has been studied previously; how...

Copper plays a dual role as a nutrient and a toxin during bacterial infections. While uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) strains can use the copper-binding metallophore yersiniabactin (Ybt) to resist copper toxicity, Ybt also converts bioavailable copper to Cu(II)-Ybt in low-copper conditions. Although E. coli have long been considered to lack a copper import pathway, we observed Ybt-mediate...

Understanding the metal-binding properties and solution states of metallo-chaperones is a key step in understanding how they function in metal ion transfer. Using spectroscopic, bioanalytical and biochemical methods, we have investigated the copper-binding properties and association states of the putative copper chaperone of Bacillus subtilis, CopZ, and a variant of the protein lacking the two ...

We studied effects of free copper ion activity and total copper concentration on copper uptake by lettuce from nutrient solution and a model was developed. In ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid and dissolved organic matter treatments, when pH and free copper ion activity were the same, root copper concentration did not change with the total copper concentration. However, at fixed pH and total copp...

The level at which copper becomes toxic is not clear. Several studies have indicated that copper causes oxidative stress; however, most have tested very high levels of copper exposure. We currently have only a limited understanding of the protective systems that operate in cells chronically exposed to copper. Additionally, the limits of homeostatic regulation are not known, making it difficult ...