An Equation for Predicting Binding Strengths of Metal Cations to Protein of Human Serum Transferrin

Huifang Xu; Yifeng Wang

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arXiv · 1711.06724

An Equation for Predicting Binding Strengths of Metal Cations to Protein of Human Serum Transferrin

Huifang Xu·Yifeng Wang

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Abstract

Because human serum transferrin (hTF) exists freely in serum, it is a potential target for cancer treatment drugs and in curing iron-overloaded conditions in patients via long-term transfusion therapy. The understanding of the interactions between hTF and metal ions is very important for biological, pharmalogical, toxicological, and other protein engineering purposes. In this paper, a simple linear free energy correlation is proposed to predict the binding strength between hTF protein and metal cations. The stability constants for a family of metal-hTF complexes can be correlated to the non-solvation energies and the radii of cations. The binding strength is determined by both the physical properties (charge and size or ionic radius) and chemical properties (non-solvation energy) of a given cation. The binding strengths of either divalent and trivalent metals can then be predicted systematically.

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Huifang Xu, Yifeng Wang. 2017-11-17. An Equation for Predicting Binding Strengths of Metal Cations to Protein of Human Serum Transferrin. https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.06724

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