BACKGROUND Zinc is an essential micronutrient for human health and has numerous structural and biochemical roles. The search for a reliable, sensitive, and specific index of zinc status has been the subject of considerable research, which has resulted in the identification of a number of potentially useful biomarkers. OBJECTIVE The objective was to assess the usefulness of biomarkers of zinc ...

Sequence databases can be searched for homologies of zinc coordination motifs with characteristic ligand signatures. Ensuing predictions that 3–10 % of the human genes encodes zinc proteins are most remarkable. But they seem conservative when considering that database mining cannot discover new signatures or coordination environments that employ nonsequential binding of ligands and sulfur-ligan...

Zinc ®ngers are small protein domains in which zinc plays a structural role contributing to the stability of the domain. Zinc ®ngers are structurally diverse and are present among proteins that perform a broad range of functions in various cellular processes, such as replication and repair, transcription and translation, metabolism and signaling, cell proliferation and apoptosis. Zinc ®ngers ty...

ZInC (Zebrafish Insertional Collection, http://research.nhgri.nih.gov/ZInC/) is a web-searchable interface of insertional mutants in zebrafish. Over the last two decades, the zebrafish has become a popular model organism for studying vertebrate development as well as for modeling human diseases. To facilitate such studies, we are generating a genome-wide knockout resource that targets every zeb...

BACKGROUND The prevalence of inadequate zinc intake in a population can be estimated by comparing the zinc content of the food supply with the population's theoretical requirement for zinc. However, assumptions regarding the nutrient composition of foods, zinc requirements, and zinc absorption may affect prevalence estimates. These analyses were conducted to: (1) evaluate the effect of varying ...

MOTIVATION Zinc-binding proteins are the most abundant metallo-proteins in Protein Data Bank (PDB). Accurate prediction of zinc-binding sites in proteins of unknown function may provide important clues for the inference of protein function. As zinc binding is often associated with characteristic 3D arrangements of zinc ligand residues, its prediction may benefit from using not only the sequence...

BACKGROUND It is hypothesized that poor zinc nutritional status is associated with an increased risk of esophageal cancer (EC), but current evidence is contradictory. Since some factors may influence zinc absorption, its status may be better evaluated thorough biomarkers. The objectives of this study were to perform a systematic review on the association of zinc biomarkers with EC in observatio...

Zinc fingers are the most abundant DNA-binding motifs encoded by eukaryotic genomes and one of the best understood DNA-recognition domains. Each zinc finger typically binds a 3-nt target sequence, and it is possible to engineer zinc-finger arrays (ZFAs) that recognize extended DNA sequences by linking together individual zinc fingers. Engineered zinc-finger proteins have proven to be valuable t...