Dipartimento di Biologia Cellulare e dello Sviluppo, Università di Palermo, Palermo, Italy.
Crit Rev Toxicol. 2011 Jan;41(1):75-82. doi: 10.3109/10408444.2010.529104. Epub 2010 Nov 12.
Cadmium (Cd) is an underground mineral widely used in the steel industry, in plastics, and as a component of batteries. It is an industrial and environmental pollutant released as an air contaminant from fertilizers and, more prominently, in the form of wastewater. Food, drinking water, and, mainly, inhalation of smoke from cigarettes are sources of daily exposure of humans to the heavy metal. Although Cd has no known useful function for humans as well as other organisms, it appears to evoke in cells a number of responses that involve not only death signaling but also protective reactions against the toxicity. This finding prompted a number of experimental studies aimed to elucidate the cellular and molecular aspects of Cd-dependent regulation of gene expression and signal transduction pathways in different model system. Here, the authors briefly review the role of Cd as a transcriptional regulator in diverse cytotypes of human origin, focusing in particular on its effects on two classes of genes, i.e., stress-response genes such as metallothioneins (MTs), heme oxygenase, and heat shock proteins (hsps), and apoptosis-related genes, but giving also an overview of many other examples of genes involved in cell metabolism and both intracellular and extracellular signalization whose expression levels are controlled by Cd.
镉（Cd）是一种地下矿物，广泛用于钢铁工业、塑料工业以及电池制造。它是一种工业和环境污染物，作为肥料的空气污染物释放，更突出的是以废水的形式。食物、饮用水，主要是吸烟产生的烟雾，是人类日常暴露于重金属的来源。尽管镉对人类和其他生物体没有已知的有用功能，但它似乎在细胞中引发了一系列反应，不仅涉及死亡信号，还涉及对毒性的保护反应。这一发现促使进行了许多实验研究，旨在阐明不同模型系统中 Cd 依赖性基因表达调控和信号转导途径的细胞和分子方面。在这里，作者简要回顾了 Cd 作为转录调节剂在人类不同细胞类型中的作用，特别关注它对两类基因的影响，即应激反应基因，如金属硫蛋白（MTs）、血红素加氧酶和热休克蛋白（hsps），以及与凋亡相关的基因，但也概述了许多其他参与细胞代谢以及细胞内和细胞外信号化的基因的例子，其表达水平受 Cd 控制。
