Nickel binding to Cap43 protein

Cap43 has been reported to be specifically induced by nickel compounds in a variety of cell lines. Although the function of Cap43 protein (MW 43,000) is not clear, it does appear to be induced in response to an increase in intracellular concentration of Ca2+, caused by nickel ion exposure in cultured human cells, for this reason is named Cap43: Calcium protein 43,000. Cap43 protein is expressed at low levels in normal tissues however, it is overexpressed in cancer cells. The high level of expression in cancerous status combined with the elevated stability of Cap43 protein makes it an excellent cancer marker.A possible way to better understand the molecular mechanisms implicated in toxicity and carcinogenicity of nickel compounds is to study the characteristics of the proteins expressed by the genes specifically induced by these carcinogens. For this reason we focused our attention to investigate the interaction ability of nickel to Cap43 protein.
The peculiarity of Cap43 protein is in its new mono-histidinic motif consisting of ten amino acidsTRSRSHTSEGfragment repeated three times in the C-terminus.