Mineral zinc perhaps the most ubiquitous and versatile of all metal cofactors. Zinc- binding proteins that engage DNA, the so called zinc finger proteins, attest to the versatility of zinc in biological systems.
Zinc fingers may have evolved originally from peptides, which maintained a simple ββα structure independently of zinc.
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| Zinc finger ribbon structure |
Zinc fingers are abundant in nature and the huge variety found in various organisms, from yeast to human, may in part be due to their modular nature. Approximately 3% of the genome of mammals codes for zinc finger protein.
In zinc finger proteins, Zn2+ contributes of the stability of the loop structure that contracts the major and minor grooves of DNA.
The majority of zinc fingers fall into three fold groups: the C2H2-like zinc finger, the treble clef zinc finger and the zinc ribbon.
Zinc finger
