Part:BBa_K2578721

Protein coding sequence for Mouse metallothionein 2 (Mt2)

This is the basic part of the Mus musculus synthesising gene (Mt2). The genomic sequence of the Mt2 gene is referenced from NCBI (Gene ID 17750)[1].

Metallothioneins are small cysteine-rich proteins made of 61-68 amino acids which can be found in a broad range of organisms, including both eukaryotes and prokaryotes. The metallothioneins are expressed as intracellular protein. [2]

Metallothioneins are mainly responsible for metalloregulation in cells of living organisms. The rich Cysteine domains in metallothioneins allow the non-covalent binding of trace metals such as cadmium(Cd2+), lead(Pb2+), copper(Cu1+), (Cu2+) and mercury(Hg2+), etc. [3,4]

The Mt2 gene has similar ability to Mt1 gene as they are equivalent proteins. They have strong binding affinity to heavy metals[5] and serve severe function like metal homeostasis and metabolism and protect cell from oxidative stress of zinc ion in mouse liver[5,6]. But when compared to the metal binding ability to metal ions, results shown that Mt2 has better binding ability of Zinc ions (Zn2+) while Mt1 gene has better binding ability of copper ions(Cu1+) and cadmium ions (Cd2+).[7]

The part is the gene of interest of the composite part BBa_K2578720.However, we failed to submit the part to the iGEM community as there are introns in the gene of interest. Therefore, there is an incompletion of the Mt2 subproject