Thiele's team is studying processes affected by the cell membrane and have identified a gene essential for copper transport into the embryonic cell, Ctr1. "A lot of people don't realize that copper is important for the appropriate neuropeptides—neuropeptide Y and other neuropeptides," says Thiele. "Our connective tissue, our skin, and our tendons have to be mature, and it's a copper-dependent enzyme that does that." Mammals without this copper transporter die during gestation, he says. Using knockout mouse models, Thiele and colleagues found that embryos lacking both copies of the Ctr1 gene did not survive;1 their neural tubes did not close before they died, indicating neural development deficits.
Normally, the copper transporter Ctr1 picks up copper ion in the plasma membrane. Research led by Jonathan Gitlin at the Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, shows that the copper is then handed off to metallochaperone ATOX1, which carries it from the ...
