Projects / Programmes
Copper homeostasis in the digestive glands of crustacea
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 1.03.00 |
Natural sciences and mathematics |
Biology |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| B210 |
Biomedical sciences |
Histology, cytochemistry, histochemistry, tissue culture |
| B361 |
Biomedical sciences |
Physiology of invertebrates |
| P310 |
Natural sciences and mathematics |
Proteins, enzymology |
| B340 |
Biomedical sciences |
Animal anatomy, animal morphology |
copper homeostasis, crustacea, metallothioneins, intracellular granules, chromatography, light microscopy, electron microscopy
Researchers (9)
Organisations (1)
Abstract
Copper is an essential trace metal required for survival by all organisms and a potential cytotoxin. Maintaining of copper homeostasis demands precise and coordinated mechanisms for uptake, distribution and export. Recent investigations of bacteria, yeast and mammals have explained many cellular mechanisms involved in copper balance. The key molecules in the regulation of copper include transport proteins for uptake and export; metallochaperones, cytosolic proteins acting in the intracellular trafficking; metallothioneins, ubiquitous proteins of low molecular weight and high metal content, involved in metal homeostasis, but their exact biological function is still a matter of debate. A large repertoire of proteins with a role in copper homeostasis has been identified and many mechanisms of their actions have been explained, but many questions in this field remain to be elucidated.
Copper dynamics in crustacea is extremly intense, as copper is part of their respiratory pigment hemocyanin. Periods of intense synthesis and intense degradation of hemocyanin are related to the molting cycle of the animal. Investigations of decapod crustacea have revealed, that the concentrations of copper and copper-metallothioneins in the digestive glands change during the molting cycle. Digestive glands are the central metabolic organ of crustacea, where also the synthesis of hemocyanin takes place. Besides, in isopod crustacea digestive glands contain an outstanding amount of intracellular copper granules.
We suppose that copper dynamics in the digestive glands of isopod crustacea is very intense and we consider this organ as a good system for studying copper homeostasis. We expect metallothioneins to play one of the mayor roles in copper distribution in the digestive glands of isopods. Biochemical methods will be used for characterization of copper-metallothioneins and light and electron microscopy for localization of these proteins at tissue and subcellular levels. We presume that the amount and distribution of intracellular copper granules in the digestive glands could be related to copper dynamics during the molting cycle of the animal. Histochemical localization of copper granules and ultrastructural analysis will be used to test this hypothesis.
We expect that the results of the proposed investigation will contribute to understanding of copper dynamics in the crustacean digestive glands and to general insight into copper balance in organisms.
