zn (ii) is an important regulator of caspase-3, as well as an antioxidant, microtubule stabilizer, growth cofactor, and anti-inflammatory agent. over the past 30 years, many researchers have demonstrated the important role of zn (ii) in a variety of physiological processes, including growth and development, maintenance and priming of the immune system, and in tissue repair and regeneration. in ...

Zinc is the second most abundant metal in human body, and a relatively large amount of zinc is found in the brain, indicating its essential role in central nerve system. Zn 2+ is stored in synaptic vesicles of glutamatergic neurons and is released from the terminals for synaptic signaling. Zinc is also found in zinc containing proteins. It is estimated that the human proteome contains about 300...

Changes in extracellular zinc concentration participate in modulating fundamental cellular processes such as proliferation, secretion, and ion transport in a mechanism that is not well understood. Here, we show that a micromolar concentration of extracellular zinc triggers a massive release of calcium from thapsigargin-sensitive intracellular pools in the colonocytic cell line HT29. Calcium rel...

Zinc (Zn(2+)) appears to be intimately involved in insulin metabolism since insulin secretion is correlated with zinc secretion in response to glucose stimulation, but little is known about the regulation of zinc homeostasis in pancreatic beta-cells. This study set out to identify the intracellular zinc transient by imaging free cytosolic zinc in HIT-T15 beta-cells with fluorescent zinc indicat...

Zinc is an essential trace element required for enzymatic activity and for maintaining the conformation of many transcription factors; thus, zinc homeostasis is tightly regulated. Although zinc affects several signaling molecules and may act as a neurotransmitter, it remains unknown whether zinc acts as an intracellular second messenger capable of transducing extracellular stimuli into intracel...

Zinc is a trace element that is essential for innate and adaptive immune responses. In addition to being a structural element of many proteins, zinc also functions as a neurotransmitter and an intracellular messenger. Temporal or spatial changes in bioavailable zinc may influence the activity of several enzymes, including kinases and phosphatases. We provide evidence that zinc functions as an i...

Two histidines are known to be essential for zinc potentiation of rat P2X2 receptors, but the chemistry of zinc coordination would suggest that other residues also participate in this zinc-binding site. There is also a second lower affinity zinc-binding site in P2X2 receptors whose constituents are unknown. To assess whether the extracellular acidic residues of the P2X2 receptor contribute to z...

As recently as 20 years ago, all zinc in biological systems was believed to be tightly bound to proteins, and the idea of imaging zinc was considered heretical. Beginning with Maske's research with dithizonate staining of the hippocampus in the 1950s, however, zinc-sensitive dyes have indicated that, in mammalian cells, free zinc can exist in at least three separate pools. These pools include v...

Egg activation refers to events required for transition of a gamete into an embryo, including establishment of the polyspermy block, completion of meiosis, entry into mitosis, selective recruitment and degradation of maternal mRNA, and pronuclear development. Here we show that zinc fluxes accompany human egg activation. We monitored calcium and zinc dynamics in individual human eggs using selec...