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Updated: Jun 27, 2025

Essential Metal Uptake in Gram-negative Bacteria: X-ray Fluorescence, Radioisotopes, and Cell Fractionation
Published on: February 1, 2018
In a state of flux: new insight into the transport processes that maintain bacterial metal homeostasis
Natalia Kwiatos1, Kevin J Waldron1
1Laboratory of Metalloprotein Biology, Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland.
Abstract:
A new study by Nies et al. (J Bacteriol 206:e00080-24, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1128/jb.00080-24) provides a rich, quantitative data set of zinc accumulation by cells of Cupriavidus metallidurans, including of mutant bacterial strains lacking import or efflux genes, and comparison of zinc accumulation by cells previously starved of metal with those of zinc-replete cells. The data surprisingly demonstrate the concomitant activity of both active metal import and metal efflux systems. They present a flow equilibrium model to describe zinc homeostasis in bacteria.
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