Introduction

Metal centres play a very important role in many biological systems, and especially in the reactivity of proteins and enzymes. The biochemistry of metalloproteins is determined to a large degree by the fundamental chemical properties of the metal centre. A wide range of powerful spectroscopic methods can provide direct insight into these chemical properties. Modern computational methods, especially density functional theory, are able to provide a detailed description of the metal centres, their properties, and their reactivity.

This meeting was aimed at exploring the key challenges in understanding the biological chemistry of metals.

State of the art work using advanced physical and computational methods to probe the electronic structure and the reactivity at the active sites of metalloenzymes will be presented.

These investigations are truly interdisciplinary and the development and application of physical methods and computational chemistry to biological problems require spectroscopists and theoretical chemists to collaborate with each other and with a wide range of other scientists, notably biochemists and coordination chemists. This is particularly true as spectroscopy and theory typically provide insight into slightly different aspects of reactivity. Attendance of Faraday Discussion 148 provided substantial benefits to both experimentalists and theoreticians working in this field.

Themes

• Copper chemistry. Redox behaviour, oxygen binding, multi-copper centres, catalysis and mechanisms
• Haem and non-haem iron, and other metal centres
• Insight from advanced spectroscopic methods, including time-resolved structural studies
• Reaction mechanisms: what do we learn from computation and spectroscopy?
• Computational techniques: DFT, QM/MM, MD, and others...
  

Scientific Committee

Professor Jeremy Harvey (University of Bristol, UK) (Chair)
Dr Jonathan McMaster (University of Nottingham, UK)
Dr Julea Butt (University of East Anglia, UK)
Dr Robert Deeth (University of Warwick, UK)
Professor Andrew Thomson (University of East Anglia, UK)

Sponsor

We would like to thank the Inorganic Biochemistry Discussion Group (IBDG) of the RSC and Bruker for their sponsorship of Faraday Discussion 148.

Co-sponsor

We would like to thank the British Biophysical Society for their co-sponsorship support of Faraday Discussion 148.