Lead is a ubiquitous environmental contaminant; nearly 5% of American children are affected by lead poisoning (a blood lead level (BLL) of 10 mgdL 1 or higher). Even lower BLLs have been shown to cause many subtle health effects in children. Lead, which is found in paint and soil, causes toxicity by several possible mechanisms. Pb interacts with several zinc enzymes or proteins (such as carboni...

The Zap1p transcription factor senses cellular zinc status and increases expression of its target genes in response to zinc deficiency. Previously known Zap1p-regulated genes encode the Zrt1p, Zrt2p, and Zrt3p zinc transporter genes and Zap1p itself. To allow the characterization of additional genes in yeast important for zinc homeostasis, a systematic study of gene expression on the genome-wid...

The Zap1 transcriptional activator of Saccharomyces cerevisiae controls zinc homeostasis. Zap1 induces target gene expression in zinc-limited cells and is repressed by high zinc. One such target gene is ZAP1 itself. In this report, we examine how zinc regulates Zap1 function. First, we show that transcriptional autoregulation of Zap1 is a minor component of zinc responsiveness; most regulation ...

Hyperaccumulators tolerate and accumulate extraordinarily high concentrations of heavy metals. Content of the metal chelator nicotianamine (NA) in the root of zinc hyperaccumulator Arabidopsis halleri is elevated compared with nonhyperaccumulators, a trait that is considered to be one of the markers of a hyperaccumulator. Using metabolite-profiling analysis of root secretions, we found that exc...

A simple foil polishing process is demonstrated to significantly improve the electrochemical plating/stripping stability of electrodes in zinc-ion batteries, suppressing dendrite growth and prolonging cell lifetimes.

Zinc is an essential biological trace element. It is required for the structure or function of over 300 proteins, and it is increasingly recognized for its role in cell signaling. However, high concentrations of zinc have cytotoxic effects, and overexposure to zinc can cause pain and inflammation through unknown mechanisms. Here we show that zinc excites nociceptive somatosensory neurons and ca...

This paper describes a robust design method for separation of zinc ions from a solution using a laboratory electrodialysis (ED) setup. An experimental investigation is presented to determine the optimum configuration of factors for the best performance. In order to optimize the performance, the factors which have the greatest influence have to be identified and their optimum values chosen. In t...

Between 5 and 10% of all proteins of a given organism are estimated to require zinc for function, and hence zinc is essential for almost any given metabolic process. It is therefore of great interest to understand major players and mechanisms that ensure the tight and correct control of zinc distribution and speciation in organisms and their individual cells. Significant progress has been made ...

A PVC-based membrane of 12-crown-4 exhibits good response for Zn2+ in a wide concentration range (7.08  10-5-1.00  10-1 M) with a non-nernstian slope of 20.5 mv per decade of concentration of Zn2+. The response time of sensor is <10 s and the membrane can be used for more than 3 months without observing any divergence. In addition, the proposed sensor exhibits very good selectivity for Zn2+ o...

Zinc ion-induced assembly of tubulin was followed using electron microscopy and turbidimetric measurements. A scheme utilizing repeated cycles of assembly and disassembly was used to prepare tubulin and microtubule-associated proteins (MAPs) (Shelanski, M. L., Gaskin, F., and Cantor, C. R. (1973) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 70, 765-768). Tubulin was further purified by phosphocellulose chro...