The past fifteen years have seen intense investigation into the affinity of marine metabolites for chelating metal ions. The first NPR Highlight article of 2007, by Gerry Pattenden and Anna Bertram from the University of Nottingham, UK, gives a timely perspective on this interesting area. 




Pattenden focuses on azole-based cyclic peptides from sea squirts (ascidians), which have shown a particularly high propensity to chelate to metal ions. The isolation and characterisation of a number of cyclic peptide-metal chelates described in this article provides evidence that metals may play a role in the assembly of cyclic peptides, and that these ligand-metal conjugates are probably involved in biological functions such as electron transfer. 

The work described in this Highlight article has no doubt laid the foundations for the future discovery of other biological and ecological mysteries associated with these cyclic peptide-metal conjugates.

Richard Kelly