A protein engineered to bind uranyl selectively and with femtomolar affinity

Zhou L., Bosscher M., Zhang C., Oezcubukcu S., Zhang L., Zhang W., ...Daha Fazla

NATURE CHEMISTRY, cilt.6, sa.3, ss.236-241, 2014 (SCI-Expanded) identifier identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 6 Sayı: 3
  • Basım Tarihi: 2014
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1038/nchem.1856
  • Dergi Adı: NATURE CHEMISTRY
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.236-241
  • Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Uranyl (UO22+), the predominant aerobic form of uranium, is present in the ocean at a concentration of similar to 3.2 parts per 10(9) (13.7 nM); however, the successful enrichment of uranyl from this vast resource has been limited by the high concentrations of metal ions of similar size and charge, which makes it difficult to design a binding motif that is selective for uranyl. Here we report the design and rational development of a uranyl-binding protein using a computational screening process in the initial search for potential uranyl-binding sites. The engineered protein is thermally stable and offers very high affinity and selectivity for uranyl with a K-d of 7.4 femtomolar (fM) and >10,000-fold selectivity over other metal ions. We also demonstrated that the uranyl-binding protein can repeatedly sequester 30-60% of the uranyl in synthetic sea water. The chemical strategy employed here may be applied to engineer other selective metal-binding proteins for biotechnology and remediation applications.