Metal assimilation

Figure 5. Digestion strategies in molluscs. Modified from [68] Decho, A. W. and Luoma, S. N. (1996) Flexible digestion strategies and trace metal assimilation in marine bivalves in Limnol. Oceanogr., 41, 568-572. Reproduced with permission...

While recognizing that this is a supreme example of reductionist simplification, it nonetheless allows us to situate the three model systems that we will consider here, because the mechanisms of metal assimilation are often significantly different. Finally, once the metal ions have been assimilated, they must be incorporated into the corresponding proteins, we have already presented in Chapter 3 a brief consideration of some of the ways in which metal centres, whether individual metal ions or more complex metal clusters, are engineered into their metalloprotein targets. 

The importance of metal assimilation for bacteria is perhaps best illustrated by the correlation between the efficacy of iron uptake systems and virulence in many strains of pathogenic... 

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