Iron Metabolism in Eukaryotes—Mars and Venus at It Again

Iron and copper are cofactors for many enzymes and are stored, transported, and sequestered by cells, but the complexities of their metabolism are not completely understood. Two new papers, one in this week's Science and one in the Journal of Biological Inorganic Chemistry (vol. 1, no. 1, p. 15), push our understanding of iron metabolism forward on two fronts. Stearman et al. (p. 1552) have described a protein in yeast that transports iron across cell membranes, and Zaitseva and co-workers present the structure of the ferroxidase ceruloplasmin. In their Perspective, Kaplan and O'Halloran discuss iron metabolism and how these results advance the field.

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