Talk:Mercury(II) reductase

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Molecular Biology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Molecular Biology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Molecular BiologyWikipedia:WikiProject Molecular BiologyTemplate:WikiProject Molecular BiologyMolecular Biology articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.
	This article is supported by the Molecular and Cell Biology task force (assessed as Low-importance).

This article was the subject of an educational assignment in 2015 Q1. Further details were available on the "Education Program:University of Toronto/CHM437S Bioinorganic Chemistry (Winter 2015)" page, which is now unavailable on the wiki.

wrong reaction?

In enzymology, a mercury(II) reductase (EC 1.16.1.1) is an enzyme that catalyzes the chemical reaction

Hg + NADP⁺ + H⁺

\rightleftharpoons

Hg²⁺ + NADPH

206.212.30.207 wrote "(Please explain. This is not the reaction listed in either of the papers you cite.)" --Rajah (talk) 17:22, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't the reaction be reversed, as the reaction direction should indicate that mercury is being reduced to it's elemental form: Hg²⁺ + NADPH ↔ Hg⁰ + NADP⁺ + H⁺? I know this is a reversible reaction, but under cellular and standard conditions, the reaction will go to the right when read this way, as is convention. To be even more correct, the following should be used to indicate that the enzyme's cysteine sulfides play a role in the reaction: NADPH + RS-Hg-SR + H⁺ ↔ NADP⁺ Hg⁾ + 2RSH (from Fox & Walsh, J Biol Chem 1981).--Swhite92 (talk) 17:40, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Usage of this enzyme by organisms

The article is quite ok, but what I would like to see is that it can be more specific, in regards to which organisms use this enzyme.

Right now it reads this:

"Mercury(II) reductase is found in the cytoplasm of many eubacteria[1] in both aerobic and anaerobic environments"

But this does not give us a lot of information. In the long run it would be nice if someone from a microbial ecology background could extend this a little - just to see which organisms may need this. I assume it's mostly bacteria but perhaps archaea too? What differences may then be a consequence of this? 2A02:8388:1602:6D80:C080:419D:679D:C9F8 (talk) 21:59, 4 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]