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Publication Abstract from PubMed

Uranyl (UO2(2+)), the predominant aerobic form of uranium, is present in the ocean at a concentration of ~3.2 parts per 10(9) (13.7 nM); however, the successful enrichment of uranyl from this vast resource has been limited by the high concentrations of metal ions of similar size and charge, which makes it difficult to design a binding motif that is selective for uranyl. Here we report the design and rational development of a uranyl-binding protein using a computational screening process in the initial search for potential uranyl-binding sites. The engineered protein is thermally stable and offers very high affinity and selectivity for uranyl with a Kd of 7.4 femtomolar (fM) and >10,000-fold selectivity over other metal ions. We also demonstrated that the uranyl-binding protein can repeatedly sequester 30-60% of the uranyl in synthetic sea water. The chemical strategy employed here may be applied to engineer other selective metal-binding proteins for biotechnology and remediation applications.

A protein engineered to bind uranyl selectively and with femtomolar affinity.,Zhou L, Bosscher M, Zhang C, Ozcubukcu S, Zhang L, Zhang W, Li CJ, Liu J, Jensen MP, Lai L, He C Nat Chem. 2014 Mar;6(3):236-41. doi: 10.1038/nchem.1856. Epub 2014 Jan 26. PMID:24557139^[1]

From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.