Dr. Barry P. Rosen, professor and chairman of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Wayne State University’s School of Medicine, has made a fundamental discovery about how cells detoxify arsenic.

Dr. Rosen and a team of researchers at Wayne State University in Detroit and the University of Durham in the United Kingdom, have been studying arsenic toxicity in water supplies, particularly in countries such as Bangladesh and India, but also well water in Oakland County, Michigan. Their research has identified a bacterial protein, ArsD, that acts as a “chaperone” for arsenic to carry the toxic metal to a pump that removes it from the cell. According to Dr. Rosen, “This chaperone prevents arsenic from reacting with other proteins inside of cells.”

Arsenic occurs naturally in soil, rocks, animals, plants and air and can be spread through the environment by natural processes such as erosion. Ground water tends to have higher levels of arsenic than surface waters, and often these ground waters are sources of drinking water. Swallowing even small amounts of arsenic-contaminated water over time could lead to a variety of health problems. Illnesses caused by long-term exposure to environmental arsenic include cancers of the lung, bladder, skin, liver, prostate and kidney, as well as cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus and nerve damage.

“Inside of cells, arsenic poisons many metabolic systems,” said Dr. Rosen. As reported by the journal Nature (Nature 443, 886-887 (26 October 2006)), Dr. Rosen, his graduate student, Yung-Feng Lin, and his collaborator, Adrian Walmsley from the University of Durham, have identified a bacterial protein called ArsD, that is the is the first ever identified arsenic chaperone. This discovery may eventually lead to new ways to detoxify drinking water and potentially saving lives.

The full report is available in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 103, 15617-15622 (2006).