Trisulfides in proteins.

Trisulfides and other oligosulfides are widely distributed in the biological world. In plants, for example, garlic, trisulfides are associated with potentially beneficial properties. However, an extra neutral sulfur atom covalently bound between the two sulfur atoms of a pair of cysteines is not a common post-translational modification, and the number of proteins in which a trisulfide has been unambiguously identified is small. Nevertheless, we believe that its prevalence may be underestimated, particularly with the increasing evidence for significant pools of sulfides in living tissues and their possible roles in cellular metabolism. This review focuses on examples of proteins that are known to contain a trisulfide bridge, and gives an overview of the chemistry of trisulfide formation, and the methods by which it is detected in proteins.