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Review
. 2013 Apr-Jun;34(2-3):612-9.
doi: 10.1016/j.mam.2012.05.011.

The SLC39 family of zinc transporters

Jeeyon Jeong  1 , David J Eide
Affiliations
Review

The SLC39 family of zinc transporters

Jeeyon Jeong et al. Mol Aspects Med. 2013 Apr-Jun.

Abstract

Zinc is a trace element nutrient that is essential for life. This mineral serves as a cofactor for enzymes that are involved in critical biochemical processes and it plays many structural roles as well. At the cellular level, zinc is tightly regulated and disruption of zinc homeostasis results in serious physiological or pathological issues. Despite the high demand for zinc in cells, free or labile zinc must be kept at very low levels. In humans, two major zinc transporter families, the SLC30 (ZnT) family and SLC39 (ZIP) family control cellular zinc homeostasis. This review will focus on the SLC39 transporters. SLC39 transporters primarily serve to pass zinc into the cytoplasm, and play critical roles in maintaining cellular zinc homeostasis. These proteins are also significant at the organismal level, and studies are revealing their link to human diseases. Therefore, we will discuss the function, structure, physiology, and pathology of SLC39 transporters.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Phylogenetic relationships of the human ZIP transporters. Protein sequences were retrieved from NCBI, and the dendrogram was generated from the amino acids sequences aligned by ClustalW2 and the phylogenetic graphics program TreeDyn (Chevenet et al., 2006). Among the 55 human SLC families, the SLC39 family is one of the six families involved in metal ion transport (He et al., 2009a). SLC39 proteins are members of the 2.A.5.2.1, 2.A.5.3.1, and 2.A.5.4.1 categories of the Transporter Classification Database (http://www.tcdb.org/).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Subcellular localization of human ZIP transporters. Directions of zinc transport are shown as arrows. Note that this figure only provides a very simplified view, as expression of some ZIP proteins are tissue- or cell type-specific, and regulated by zinc status or other signals. The inset shaded in yellow depicts the predicted topology of a ZIP transporter.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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