Lead toxicity through the leadzyme

Lead is one of the most dangerous toxic agents for all living organisms. In humans, elevated levels of lead have been linked to a number of disorders for which various molecular mechanisms have been proposed. However, none of them has been fully understood. It has also been known for several years that at micromolar concentrations lead can bind a unique RNA motif and catalyze a site-specific hydrolysis of the polyribonucleotide chain. This motif, called leadzyme, may be one of the major targets for lead within the cell, and it can cleave various cellular RNAs. A search of GenBank revealed the sequences that can potentially fold into the structure containing the leadzyme motif and that they are rather common in eukaryotic genomes. We found that the domain occurs with a high frequency in human mRNA sequences. Thus, the leadzyme nucleolytic properties should be considered as a possible mechanism for destruction of RNA within a cell. In particular, targeting of the RNA scaffold of ribosomes or spliceosomes may explain lead-mediated toxicity leading to cell death.