Post Fri Mar 23, 2018 4:55 pm

Biological lanthanide-containing enzymes found

Hi all,

I know that we generally assume that the Lanthanides are not present biologically, one reason why our backgrounds are so low.

However, there was an article in a recent issue of Chemical and Engineering News (the weekly magazine of the American Chemical Society), mentioning some bacterial enzymes (eg, a methanol dehydrogenase) which have been found to contain lanthanides:

"How lanthanides keep volcanic bacteria alive"
https://cen.acs.org/articles/96/web/201 ... alive.html

The article gives a few citations:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1462-2920.12249
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-11060-z
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aaa9091

Most of them have been found in volcanic or hot-spring conditions (where the lanthanide aqueous solubility is higher, particularly since often both hot and acidic as well), but at least one leaf-dwelling bacteria on the campus of San Jose State University (in California) has been found to use La3+.


Most of use work on human or mouse tissues, and there's no biological evidence (so far) that either organism use lanthanides. But I'm posting this mainly to alert people to the possibility, especially if they're working with microbes.


Mike