Plant copper chaperones.

Copper chaperones, soluble copper-binding proteins, are essential for ensuring proper distribution of copper to cellular compartments and to proteins requiring copper prosthetic groups. They are found in all eukaryotic organisms. Orthologues of the three copper chaperones characterized in yeast, ATX1, CCS and COX17, are present in Arabidopsis thaliana. Plants are faced with unique challenges to maintain metal homoeostasis, and thus their copper chaperones have evolved by diversifying and gaining additional functions. In this paper we present our current knowledge of copper chaperones in A. thaliana based on the information available from the complete sequence of its genome.