Zinc deficiency is associated with poor growth and development. It has been postulated that a deficiency of the various zinc metalloenzymes results from the lack of dietary zinc. From present study, an examination of some aspects of this postulate, we conclude the following about zinc deficiency in pigs: (1) Of the tissues studied, it results im diminished zinc content only in liver, kidney, ...

Zinc is an essential element required for the function of more than 300 enzymes spanning all classes. Despite years of dedicated study, questions regarding the connections between primary and secondary metal ligands and protein structure and function remain unanswered, despite numerous mechanistic, structural, biochemical, and synthetic model studies. Protein design is a powerful strategy for r...

The metal-binding preferences of most metalloproteins do not match their metalrequirements. Thus, metallation of an estimated 30% of metalloenzymes is aided by metaldelivery systems, with ~25% acquiring preassembled metal-cofactors. The remaining ~70% are presumed to compete for metals from buffered metal-pools. Metallation is further aided by maintaining the relative concentrations of these po...

Zinc is present in most body cells of human beings, but its concentration is very low. Zinc(II) ion has been widely found in several metalloenzymes such as zinc-peptidases, human carbonic anhydrase and alkalinephosphatase [1]. Today more than 200 different zinc proteins are known which include numerous essential enzymes [2]. Metallothioneins, proteins containing zinc, remain unique in character...

Molecular docking uses the three-dimensional structure of a receptor to screen databases of small molecules for potential ligands, often based on energetic complementarity. For many docking scoring functions, which calculate nonbonded interactions, metalloenzymes are challenging because of the partial covalent nature of metal-ligand interactions. To investigate how well molecular docking can id...

Derived from the extensive work in the area of small molecule zinc(II) ion sensors, chelating fragment libraries of quinoline- and benzimidazole-sulfonamides have been prepared and screened against several different zinc(II)-dependent matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs). The fragments show impressive inhibition of these metalloenzymes and preferences for different MMPs based on the nature of the c...

All multisubunit DNA-dependent RNA polymerases (RNAP) are zinc metalloenzymes, and at least two zinc atoms are present per enzyme molecule. RNAP residues involved in zinc binding and the functional role of zinc ions in the transcription mechanism or RNAP structure are unknown. Here, we locate four cysteine residues in the Escherichia coli RNAP largest subunit, beta', that coordinate one of the ...