From methodological limitations to the function of metallothioneins - a guide to approaches for determining weak, moderate, and tight affinity zinc sites

Mammalian metallothioneins (MTs) are small cysteine-rich proteins whose primary role is participation in zinc and copper homeostasis. Ever since their discovery, MTs have been investigated in terms of metal-binding affinity. The initial concept of seven Zn(II) ions (Zn(7)MT) bound with the same, undifferentiated low-picomolar affinity in the α and β domains prevailed for many years and derived from spectroscopic studies. The application of fluorescent zinc probes has changed the perception of MTs, showing that they function in nanomolar to subnanomolar free zinc concentrations due to the presence of tight, moderate, and weak binding sites. The discovery of Zn(II)-depleted MTs in many tissues and determination of cellular free Zn(II) concentrations with differentiated zinc affinity sites revealed the critical importance of partially saturated Zn(4–6)MTs species in cellular zinc buffering in a wide picomolar to nanomolar range of free Zn(II) concentrations. Until today, there was no clear agreement on the presence of differentiated or only tight zinc sites. Here, we present a series of spectroscopic, mass spectrometry-based, and enzymatic competition experiments that reveal how weak, moderate, or high-affinity ligands interact with human MT2, with special attention to the determination of Zn(II) affinities. The results show that the simplification of the stability model is the major reason for determining significantly different stability data that obscured the actual MTs function. Therefore, we emphasize that different metal affinities are the single most important reason for their presumed function, which changed over the years from tight binding and, thus, storage to one that is highly dynamic.