Title

Structural analysis of bacterial metallothioneins involved in heavy metal detoxification

Authors

Deepra Ghosh¹,#, Medha Kumari²,#, Kriti Kumari², Bappa Biswas², Pritam Lenka³ & Sajalendu Ghosh^2,*

Affiliation

¹Department of Statistics, Operations and Data Science, Fox School of Business, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, 19122; ²Department of Zoology, Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee University, Ranchi, Jharkhand 834008, India; ³ICMR-Regional Medical Research Centre, Bhubaneswar, Odisha 751023, India; *Corresponding author, #Equal Contribution

Email

Deepra Ghosh - E-mail: deepra.ghosh@temple.edu
Medha Kumari - E-mail: medha8506@gmail.com
Kriti Kumari - E-mail: kritibhagat111s@gmail.com
Bappa Biswas - E-mail: bappa.kol59@gmail.com
Pritam Lenka - E-mail: pritamlenka2017@gmail.com
Sajalendu Ghosh - E-mail: ghosh.sajal@gmail.com

Article Type

Research Article

Date

Received May 1, 2026; Revised May 31, 2026; Accepted May 31, 2026, Published May 31, 2026
 

Abstract

Microorganisms have developed many ways to circumvent heavy metal stress, mainly by synthesizing metallothionein-like proteins. Heavy metal pollution is a serious environmental concern because it lasts for a long time, is highly toxic and builds up in living organisms, posing risks to both ecosystems and human health. This microbial defense against heavy metal cytotoxicity can be proven to be a game-changer in heavy metal bioremediation if properly understood in terms of size, structure and biochemical nature. Hence, four bacterial metallothionein-related proteins, Smt, MymT and BmtA, were analysed. Data shows differences in size, stability and structure: larger proteins tended to be more stable with higher aliphatic indices, while smaller ones were more flexible and still preserved key metal-binding motifs. Thus, we show the structural and evolutionary features of these proteins to understand their roles in microbial metal detoxification and bioremediation.

Keywords

Metallothionein (MT); heavy metal detoxification; in silico structural analysis; protein homology modelling; microbial bioremediation; phylogenetic analysis

Citation

Ghosh et al. Bioinformation 22(5): 2957-2965 (2026)

Edited by

P Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.