Cu metabolism in the liver

Abstract

This paper has, given some idea of our concepts of the processes involved in the transport of Cu across cell membranes in the liver, which we have summarised in Fig 1. Cu(II)His2 is reduced to Cu(I). This is transported across the membrane, re-oxidised, either before or after binding to glutathione (Freedman et al., 1989) or HAH1 (Klomp et al., 1997), binds to SAHH, and donates Cu(II) to the ATPase. It is very interesting that cells which are very diverse from an evolutionary point of view still use very similar methods to handle the metal. Whether regulation of transport is also the same remains to be seen. We would guess that, although there will be strong similarities, there will also be very significant differences, reflecting the different environments seen by different tissues in mammalian cells and given the different requirements of the tissues.