Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023:2671:121-134.
doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-3222-2_7.

Iron Accumulation in Ferritin

Akankshika Parida  1 , Rabindra K Behera  2
Affiliations

Iron Accumulation in Ferritin

Akankshika Parida et al. Methods Mol Biol. 2023.

Abstract

Understanding the iron accumulation process in ferritin protein nanocages has remained a centerpiece in the field of iron biochemistry/biomineralization, which ultimately has implications in health and diseases. Although mechanistic differences of iron acquisition and mineralization exist in the superfamily of ferritins, we describe the techniques that can be used to investigate the accumulation of iron in all the ferritin proteins by in vitro iron mineralization process. In this chapter, we report that the non-denaturing polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis coupled with Prussian blue staining (in-gel assay) can be useful to investigate the iron-loading efficiency in ferritin protein nanocage, by estimating the relative amount of iron incorporated inside it. Similarly, the absolute size of the iron mineral core and the amount of total iron accumulated inside its nanocavity can be determined by using transmission electron microscopy and spectrophotometry, respectively.

Keywords: Ferritin nanocage; Iron; Iron mineralization; Iron quantification; Iron staining; Native PAGE; TEM.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Theil EC, Tosha T, Behera RK (2016) Solving biology’s iron chemistry problem with ferritin protein nanocages. Acc Chem Res 49:784–791 - DOI
    1. Crichton R (2016) The essential role of iron in biology. In: Iron metabolism: from molecular mechanisms to clinical consequences. Wiley, p 22 - DOI
    1. Koppenol WH, Hider RH (2019) Iron and redox cycling. Do’s and don’ts. Free Radic Biol Med 133:3–10 - DOI
    1. Theil EC, Behera RK, Tosha T (2013) Ferritins for chemistry and for life. Coord Chem Rev 257:579–586 - DOI
    1. Theil EC (2013) Ferritin: the protein nanocage and iron biomineral in health and in disease. Inorg Chem 52:12223–12233 - DOI

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources