Metallothioneins
metallothioneins
Metallothionein (MT) is a family of cysteine-rich, low molecular weight (MW ranging from 500 to 14000 Da ) proteins. They are localized to the membrane of the Golgi apparatus. MTs have the capacity to bind both physiological (such as zinc, copper, selenium ) and xenobiotic (such as cadmium, mercury, silver, arsenic ) heavy metals through the thiol group of its cysteine residues, which represents nearly the 30% of its amino acidic residues.