Metal bioinorganic functions

Metal ions are required for many critical functions in humans. Scarcity of some metal ions can lead to disease. Well-known examples include pernicious anemia resulting from iron deficiency, growth retardation arising from insufficient dietary zinc, and heart disease in infants owing to copper deficiency. The ability to recognize, to understand at the molecular level, and to treat diseases caused by inadequate metal-ion function constitutes an important aspect of medicinal bioinorganic chemistry. 

Orbitally degenerate grormd states, in general, cannot be treated in the spin-Hamiltonian approach. In this case, SOC has to be evaluated explicitly on an extended basis of spin-orbit functions. However, in coordination chemistry and bioinorganic chemistry, this is only of marginal importance, because the metal centers of... 

S / V CONTENTS Preface, Robert W. Hay. Structure and Function of Manganese-Containing Biomolecules, David C. Weather-bum. Repertories of Metal Ions as Lewis Acid Catalysts in Organic Reactions, Junghan Suh. The Multicopper-Enzyme Ascorbate Oxidase, Albrecht Messerschmidt. The Bioinorganic Chemistry of Aluminum, Tomas Kiss and Etelka Farkas. The Role of Nitric Oxide in Animal Physiology, Anthony R. Butler, Frederick Flitney and Peter Rhodes. Index. 

The very important role of the heme system, Fe(Proto)LL ( 3) in biological oxygen transport and consumption as well as electron transport is a main topic not only of biochemists, but of bioinorganic chemists and biomimetic chemists as well for this general topic, the reader may consult some recent review articles [14-21,22]. Bioinorganic chemists have studied the effect of replacement of iron by other 3d metals, especially chromium, manganese, and cobalt, and frequently, interesting structural, spectral, or functional models [14,20] of the heme enzymes have been found with these metals. 

Many reviews touching on aspects of computational inorganic chemistry have appeared in fact, too many to list here. Several special thematic issues can be highlighted Chem. Rev. 2000,100 (2), 351-818 on computational transition metal chemistry Coord. Chem. Rev. 2003, 238/239, 1-417 on theoretical and computational chemistry Struct. Bond. 2004, 112/113, on principles and applications of density functional theory in inorganic chemistry J. Comput. Chem. 2006, 27 (12), 1221-1475 on theoretical bioinorganic chemistry, and no doubt many others. 

To elucidate the details of the OEC reaction mechanism, bioinorganic chemists have made many new complexes to mimic the proposed biological mechanisms. Work on small molecules has clarified many issues relevant to the OEC such as the necessity of multiple metals and the importance of proton transfer. Functional model systems are still very much less active than the OEC, but current mechanistic models show activity very analogous to mechanisms proposed for the OEC [13,28, 30-34],... 

Inorganic and bioinorganic applications of IR and Raman spectroscopies are covered in some detail in subsequent sections. General types of information that can be obtained include analytical identification, stracture and symmetry, ligand and functional group identification, metal-ligand and metal-metal bonding potentials and force constants, structural kinetics and dynamics, excited-state properties, vibronic... 

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