title: Zinc through the three domains of life.
abstract: Zinc is one of the metal ions essential for life, as it is required for the proper functioning of a large number of proteins. Despite its importance, the annotation of zinc-binding proteins in gene banks or protein domain databases still has significant room for improvement. In the present work, we compiled a list of known zinc-binding protein domains and of known zinc-binding sequence motifs (zinc-binding patterns), and then used them jointly to analyze the proteome of 57 different organisms to obtain an overview of zinc usage by archaeal, bacterial, and eukaryotic organisms. Zinc-binding proteins are an abundant fraction of these proteomes, ranging between 4% and 10%. The number of zinc-binding proteins correlates linearly with the total number of proteins encoded by the genome of an organism, but the proportionality constant of Eukaryota (8.8%) is significantly higher than that observed in Bacteria and Archaea (from 5% to 6%). Most of this enrichment is due to the larger portfolio of regulatory proteins in Eukaryota.
authors.affiliation: Magnetic Resonance Center (CERM), University of Florence, Via L. Sacconi 6, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy.
authors.forename: Claudia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Andreini
authors.forename: Lucia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Banci
authors.forename: Ivano
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Bertini
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rosato
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001105:Archaea / Q000737:chemistry / Q000254:growth & development; D019843:Archaeal Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D001419:Bacteria / Q000737:chemistry / Q000254:growth & development; D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D001665:Binding Sites; D016678:Genome; D008667:Metalloproteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000502:physiology; D040901:Proteomics / Q000379:methods*; D015032:Zinc / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D019843:Archaeal Proteins; D001426:Bacterial Proteins; D008667:Metalloproteins; D015032:Zinc