Uranium is a natural actinide present as uranyl U(VI) species in aqueous environments. Its toxicity is considered to be chemical rather than radiotoxicological. Whatever the route of entry, uranyl reaches the blood, is partly eliminated via the kidneys, and accumulated in the bones. In serum, its speciation mainly involves carbonate and proteins. Direct identification of labile uranyl-protein complexes is extremely difficult because of the complexity of this matrix. Thus, until now the biodistribution of the metal in serum has not been described, and therefore, little is known about the metal transport mechanisms leading to bone accumulation. A rapid screening method based on a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) technique was used to determine the apparent affinities for U(VI) of the major serum proteins. A first biodistribution of uranyl was obtained by ranking the proteins according to the criteria of both their serum concentrations and affinities for this metal. Despite its moderate concentration in serum, fetuin-A (FETUA) was shown to exhibit an apparent affinity within the 30 nM range and to carry more than 80% of the metal. This protein involved in bone mineralization aroused interest in characterizing the U(VI) and FETUA interaction. Using complementary chromatographic and spectroscopic approaches, we demonstrated that the protein can bind 3 U(VI) at different binding sites exhibiting Kd from ∼30 nM to 10 μM. Some structural modifications and functional properties of FETUA upon uranyl complexation were also controlled. To our knowledge, this article presents the first identification of a uranyl carrier involved in bone metabolism along with the characterization of its metal binding sites.

Bones are one of the few organs in which uranyl (UO2(2+)) accumulates. This large dioxo-cation displays affinity for carboxylates, phenolates and phosphorylated functional groups in proteins. The noncollagenous protein osteopontin (OPN) plays an important role in bone homeostasis. It is mainly found in the extracellular matrix of mineralized tissues but also in body fluids such as milk, blood and urine. Furthermore, OPN is an intrinsically disordered protein, which, like other proteins of the SIBLING family, contains a polyaspartic acid sequence and numerous patterns of alternating acidic and phosphorylated residues. All these properties led to the hypothesis that this protein could be prone to UO2(2+) binding. In this work, a simple purification procedure enabling highly purified bovine (bOPN) and human OPN (hOPN) to be obtained was developed. Various biophysical approaches were set up to study the impact of phosphorylations on the affinity of OPN for UO2(2+) as well as the formation of stable complexes originating from structural changes induced by the binding of this metal cation. The results obtained suggest a new mechanism of the interaction of UO2(2+) with bone metabolism and a new role for OPN as a metal transporter.

A sensitive immunoassay based on SPR analysis was developed to measure uranyl cation (UO(2)(2+)) affinity for any protein in a free state under physiological conditions. The technique involves immobilization of a specific monoclonal antibody (mAb) raised against UO(2)(2+) and 1,10-phenanthroline-2,9-dicarboxylic acid (DCP) used as a probe of UO(2)(2+) captured by the mAb. Calibration curves were established for accurate determination of UO(2)(2+) concentrations with a detection limit of 7 nM. The remaining free UO(2)(2+) could be accurately quantified from the different protein-metal equilibrium and a dose-response curve established for K(D) determination. This generic method was applied not only to proteins such as transferrin and albumin but also to small phosphonated ligands. Its robustness allows the fast UO(2)(2+) K(D) determination of any kind of macromolecules and small ligands using very few amount of compounds, thus opening new prospects in the field of uranium toxicity.