In biochemistry, the metallome is the distribution of
metal
A metal () is a material that, when polished or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electrical resistivity and conductivity, electricity and thermal conductivity, heat relatively well. These properties are all associated wit ...
ions
An ion () is an atom or molecule with a net electrical charge. The charge of an electron is considered to be negative by convention and this charge is equal and opposite to the charge of a proton, which is considered to be positive by convent ...
in a
cellular compartment. The term was coined in analogy with
proteome
A proteome is the entire set of proteins that is, or can be, expressed by a genome, cell, tissue, or organism at a certain time. It is the set of expressed proteins in a given type of cell or organism, at a given time, under defined conditions. P ...
, as metallomics is the study of metallome: the "comprehensive analysis of the entirety of metal and metalloid species within a cell or tissue type". Therefore, metallomics can be considered a branch of
metabolomics
Metabolomics is the scientific study of chemical processes involving metabolites, the small molecule substrates, intermediates, and products of cell metabolism. Specifically, metabolomics is the "systematic study of the unique chemical fingerpri ...
, even though the metals are not typically considered as
metabolites
In biochemistry, a metabolite is an intermediate or end product of metabolism.
The term is usually used for small molecules. Metabolites have various functions, including fuel, structure, signaling, stimulatory and inhibitory effects on enzymes, c ...
.
An alternative definition of "metallomes" as
metalloprotein
Metalloprotein is a generic term for a protein that contains a metal ion cofactor. A large proportion of all proteins are part of this category. For instance, at least 1000 human proteins (out of ~20,000) contain zinc-binding protein domains al ...
s or any other metal-containing
biomolecules
A biomolecule or biological molecule is loosely defined as a molecule produced by a living organism and essential to one or more typically biological processes. Biomolecules include large macromolecules such as proteins, carbohydrates, lipi ...
, and "metallomics" as a study of such biomolecules.
Metallointeractome
In the study of metallomes the
transcriptome
The transcriptome is the set of all RNA transcripts, including coding and non-coding, in an individual or a population of cells. The term can also sometimes be used to refer to all RNAs, or just mRNA, depending on the particular experiment. The ...
, proteome and the
metabolome
The metabolome refers to the complete set of small-molecule chemicals found within a biological sample. The biological sample can be a cell, a cellular organelle, an organ, a tissue, a tissue extract, a biofluid or an entire organism. The ...
constitutes the whole metallome. A study of the metallome is done to arrive at the metallointeractome.
Metallotranscriptome
The metallotranscriptome
can be defined as the map of the entire transcriptome in the presence of biologically or environmentally relevant concentrations of an essential or toxic metal, respectively. The metallometabolome constitutes the complete pool of small metabolites in a cell at any given time. This gives rise to the whole metallointeractome and knowledge of this is important in comparative metallomics dealing with toxicity and drug discovery.
See also
*
Bioinorganic chemistry
*
-omics
Omics is the collective characterization and quantification of entire sets of biological molecules and the investigation of how they translate into the structure, function, and dynamics of an organism or group of organisms. The branches of scien ...
References
Sources
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Systems biology
Metabolism
Bioinformatics
Biochemistry methods