Mechanism of aluminium bio-mineralization in the apoferritin cavity

Many experimental evidences point out the correlation between the presence of aluminum-ferritin\r\ncomplex and neursopathological disorders. In these complexes, two different ranges of Aluminium\r\n(Al) atoms are usually found, i.e., just few atoms or several hundreds. Here, we investigated the invitro\r\nAl-apoferritin binding, with the aim to elucidate the mechanism behind the formation of Alferritin\r\ncomplexes in-vivo. To this purpose, we studied the mineralization of Al in its ionic and\r\ncomplexed form with citrate demonstrating that high Al levels found in clinical studies can be\r\nobtained only conveying Al by small physiological ligands.