Think zinc: molecular sensor could reveal zinc’s role in diseases

Think zinc: molecular sensor could reveal zinc's role in diseases. Scientists use jellyfish proteins to look at zinc in cells - Imperial College London News Release Under strict embargo until - 18. British Summer Time / 13. US Eastern Time - Sunday 30 August 2009 Scientists have developed a new molecular sensor that can reveal the amount of zinc in cells, which could tell us more about a number of diseases, including type 2 diabetes. The research, published today in , opens the door to the hidden world of zinc biology by giving scientists an accurate way of measuring the concentration of zinc and its location in cells for the first time. Zinc is involved in many processes in the body and five percent of all the proteins made by the body's cells require zinc. Scientists believe that zinc plays a role in many diseases: for example, it helps package insulin in pancreas cells, and in people with type 2 diabetes, the gene that controls this packaging is often defective.