Sulfide ions as modulators of metal-thiolate cluster size in a plant metallothionein.

Metallothioneins are small cysteine-rich proteins coordinating various transition metal ions preferably with the electron configuration d(10). They are ubiquitously present in all phyla, and next to phytochelatins they represent a successful molecular concept for high-capacity metal ion binding. Recent studies showed the incorporation of sulfide ions into the metal-thiolate cluster of metallothionein 2 from the plant Cicer arietinum (cicMT2) increasing the cadmium binding capacity and stability of the cluster. In the present work, the sulfide-induced structural changes accompanying the cluster formation and the sulfide-modulated increase in cluster size are analyzed in detail with a variety of analytical and spectroscopic techniques. Evaluation of the mechanism of sulfide containing Cd(II)-thiolate cluster formation in cicMT2 reveals a strong dependence on the sequence of metal and sulfide additions for successful sulfide incorporation. To probe the general ability of metallothioneins to form sulfide containing larger metal-thiolate clusters, analogous experiments were performed with a mammalian metallothionein. The observation that the cadmium binding ability of rabbit liver MT2A was only slightly increased led to the development of a hypothesis in which the long cysteine-free linker regions present in certain plant metallothioneins may contribute to the accommodation of the respective larger cluster assemblies.