Scientists at Penn State have invented a brand new biosensor that can take pictures of manganese. Manganese is an important element that is needed for life to exist.
This amazing invention was made possible by a special protein known as lanmodulin. Lanmodulin is able to find and attach rare earth elements with extreme accuracy – this same protein was discovered by some of the same researchers from Penn State about five years ago.
Researchers have managed to change the protein so it prefers manganese over the metals like iron and copper that are usually used. This result is different from what usually happens with molecules for binding transition metals.
Researchers created a special sensor that could be used in bioscience to explore different things, like photosynthesis, how harmful germs affect us, and the brain. It can also help us figure out how to separate metal parts from lithium-ion batteries when we recycle them. The results were published in an important scientific journal called Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Jennifer Park, a graduate student at Penn State and the lead author of the paper said that “We have created a new kind of sensor which is unique in its capability to study Mn (Manganese). We are now able to analyze how Manganese transitions in a living system, something that couldn’t have been done before!”
The team was keeping an eye on the actions of manganese within the bacteria and are now trying to create a better sensor that can look into how this metal works in mammalian living beings.
Manganese is a metal that plays an important role in both plants and animals. In plants, it helps the process of photosynthesis, which is how they turn water into oxygen. For humans, manganese affects how our brains develop. If we have too much of it in our brain, it can cause a movement disorder like Parkinson disease. On the other hand, having lower than normal levels of manganese has been linked with Huntington’s disease.
Scientists haven’t been able to study manganese as much as other metals because they couldn’t see how it moves in cells. But a new sensor will change that, according to Joseph Cotruvo, who’s an associate professor of chemistry at Penn State and did research on this new sensor. Now scientists can start more experiments with this metal.
Cotruvo said there are many possible uses for the sensor. He was especially curious about how manganese comes into contact with germs. Our body works hard to make sure that bad bacteria can’t get enough iron, so these germs turn to manganese instead for survival.
Scientists used to struggle understanding pathogens (the bad bacteria that can make us sick) and our own immune system competing for vital metals. This was hard to figure out since we couldn’t see it happening in real time. But now, with new technology that allows us to observe these events, scientists have a better chance of making medicines to fight infections even when antibiotics don’t work anymore – like with MRSA (an infection caused by a type of staph bacteria).
It’s hard for scientists to create proteins that stick to specific metals, because all the transition metals in cells are very similar. So we don’t have much understanding of how manganese works inside living cells.
We wanted to know if it’s possible to make a protein that will only stick with one particular kind of metal, manganese. We had to figure out how to arrange the protein in such a way so that it would stay attatched to manganese more than all the other types of metals like calcium, magnesium, iron and zinc.
The team was able to show that lanmodulin can do some really cool stuff, and now they are using it as a base to create biological tools. These tools could be used to detect and recover metal ions that are important for us biologically and technologically.
Cotruvo explained, “It’s really powerful if you can tell the difference between metals that look very similar. If we use lanmodulin to catch manganese, then what other things will we find?”
A scientist group created an artificial fluorescent “sensor”, made from a type of bacterial protein, that can detect how much Manganese an environment has. This study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and Penn State University.
