金属组学:研究生命体系中金属离子的前沿交叉学科

Metallomics:An integrated biometal science

金属组学是一门新兴的前沿交叉学科,是对若干涉及金属相关生命过程的分子机制以及对细胞与组织内全部金属离子和金属配合物进行综合研究的学科.在金属组学中,生命体系中所有的金属蛋白质、金属酶以及其他含金属的生物分子统称为金属组,这个概念与基因组学中的基因组和蛋白质组学中的蛋白质组相类似.本文对金属组学中涉及的若干概念进行阐述,并将着重介绍金属组学中的研究技术和方法,特别是"组和技术",即把一种高分辨率分离技术如凝胶电泳/激光切除、色谱或者毛细管电泳与一项高灵敏度检测方法,如电感耦合等离子体质谱、电喷雾电离质谱、基质辅助激光解吸附质谱或者X射线荧光/吸收光谱联合起来.并重点分析了这些方法的优缺点以及在分离鉴别金属蛋白、磷酸化蛋白以及硒蛋白、确定金属蛋白的结构与功能的关系和医药中的金属药物活性抗药性方面的研究中的应用.

Metallomics is an emerging scientific area integrating the research fields related to the understanding of the molecular mechanisms of metal-associated life processes and the entirety of metal and metalloid species within a cell or tissue type. In metallomics, metalloproteins, metalloenzymes and other metal-containing biomolecules in a biological system are referred to as metallomes, similar to genomes and proteomes in genomics and proteomics, respectively. This review discusses the concept of metallomics with a focus on analytical techniques and methods, particularly the so-called hyphenated techniques which combine a high-resolution separation technique （gel electrophoresis/laser ablation, chromatography or capillary electrophoresis） with a highly sensitive detection method as elemental （inductively coupled plasma, ICP） or molecular （electron spray ionization （ESI） or matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization （MALDI）） mass spectrometry, or nuclear X-ray fluorescence/absorption spectrometry. The applications of these advanced analytical methods in the identification of metallo-/phosphor-/seleno-proteins, probing of relationships between structure and function of metalloproteins, and study of clinically used metallodrugs will be selectively outlined, along with their advantages and limitations.