What Is Bioinorganic Chemistry?

Also known as bioinorganic chemistry or biological coordination chemistry. It is an interdisciplinary field of various disciplines such as inorganic chemistry, biochemistry, and medicine, which has gradually formed since the 1960s. The research object is metal (and a few non-metal) elements and their compounds in living organisms, especially biological complexes formed by trace metal elements and biological macromolecular ligands, such as various metal enzymes and metal proteins. The research focuses on the relationship between their structure-property-biological activity and the mechanism involved in the reaction in the living environment. For the convenience of research, artificial analogous methods are commonly used to synthesize metal complexes with certain physiological functions.

Bioinorganic chemistry

(Natural Science)

Bioinorganic chemistry or biology

Bioinorganic chemistry is also called inorganic biochemistry and biocoordination chemistry. It is an interdisciplinary subject between biochemistry and inorganic chemistry.

Bioinorganic chemistry was brewed in the 1950s and was born in the 1960s. Great progress has been made in just half a century. Looking back at this history is very enlightening for how to carry out research on chemical problems in life sciences in the future. As early as when chemistry and biology merged and differentiated into biochemistry, the problem of re-differentiation from biochemistry was bred.

The object of biochemical research is various biological functional molecules. Biologists pay more attention to function, but after chemistry enters this field, pay attention to the relationship between structure and function. At that time, the most direct structural determination method was x-ray crystal structure analysis, and obtaining single crystals of biological macromolecules was a difficult problem. Bioinorganic chemistry began to sprout when Perutz was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for its structure and mechanism of action on myoglobin and hemoglobin. Therefore, the combination between biochemistry and structural chemistry began, and a new field was created with the content of determining the molecular structure of biological functions and elucidating the mechanism of action.

At the same time, when biochemistry goes deep into biological processes involving metal ions, it must be combined with coordination chemistry that was rapidly developing at the time. The main scholars who originally studied the solution coordination chemistry have all studied the solution chemistry of biological ligands and metal ions. RJPWilliams, nD.Perrin, KBYatzimirskh, DRWilliams, etc. have entered the field successively, making it another branch of bioinorganic chemistry.

Later it was thought that the crystal structure and the structure in the biological medium may not be the same, and the structure and conformation in solution should be studied. At this time, the rapid development of nuclear magnetic resonance technology created conditions for studying the solution structure of biological macromolecules. So opened up a new field of structural chemistry and solution chemistry, exploring the relationship between the structure and function of metal-containing biomacromolecules. Another branch of bioinorganic chemistry is the study of structure-mechanism relationships through the synthesis of model compounds or structural modifications, which is the result of synthetic chemistry introducing human bioinorganic chemistry. These three branches constitute the mainstream of bioinorganic chemistry that lasts for more than 30 years. Although the research ideas and methods have changed, these studies are aimed at understanding the structure and functional relationship of biological functional molecules containing inorganic elements. Most of them have adopted a method to isolate a single biomolecule, determine its structure, and study the reaction mechanism and structure and Functional relationship research model. Although such research has achieved many important results, people have a deeper understanding of essential elements and the biomolecules containing them. But in recent years, this kind of traditional bioinorganic chemistry research has been challenged by a series of practical problems.

In summary, most of these practical problems involve the biological effects of inorganic substances, or the response of organisms to inorganic substances. For example, the mechanism of action of inorganic drugs, the mechanism of inorganic poisoning, environmental substances and mechanisms that can damage living organisms. In the study of this kind of problem, the common core question is to answer the basic chemical reactions that constitute pharmacology and toxicology and the biological events caused by these reactions from the three levels of molecules, cells and the whole. This type of research has prompted people to raise bio-inorganic chemistry to the cellular level to study the chemical changes that occur inside and outside the cell when cells and inorganic matter interact. These chemical changes are the basis of biological effects.

The enlightenment and promotion of the development of bio-inorganic chemistry for half a century cannot be ignored. For example, mixed ligand complex chemistry, multi-metal multi-ligand system chemistry, abnormal metal valence, metal-sulfur cluster chemistry, intra- and inter-molecular electron transfer, free radical chemistry, and so on. Obviously, bioinorganic chemistry can promote biological development in the future, and it can also promote the development of chemistry to a new level. ^[1]

In 1970, the International Symposium on Bioinorganic Chemistry was held in Virginia, USA. Only 19 reports were compiled by RFGould.

In 1971, Bioinorganic Chemistry, a magazine edited by the famous American chemist GNSchrazer, was launched and renamed J. Inorganic BioChemistry in 1979

In 1995, CDGarner and I. Betini once again initiated the establishment of the Society of Biological Inorganic Chemistry and published the journal "J. of Biological Inorganic Chemistry" in 1996. JBIC has only become a global player in just a few years One of the most influential publications.

Since 1983, by I. Bertini, HBGray, BG. Malmstrom and H. Sigel formed the Organizing Committee of the International Conference on Bioinorganic Chemistry and decided to convene a conference every two years.

Advances in bioinorganic chemistry since the 1970s have been driven by three factors:

* Rapid determination of high-resolution structure of proteins and other biomolecules;

* Utilization of powerful spectroscopic tools for studies of both structures and dynamics;

* The widespread use of macromolecular engineering to create new biologically relevant structures. Today, very large molecules can be manipulated, with the result that certain proteins and nucleic acids themselves have become versatile model systems for elucidating biological function. ^[2]

The birth and development of bioinorganic chemistry has gone through almost half a century, and the establishment of an independent discipline has been a thing since 1969. People usually use the establishment of the international journal Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry (1971) as a symbol. As we all know, this discipline is an edge discipline developed in the intersection and penetration of inorganic chemistry and biology. Its basic task is to study the interactions between metals and biological ligands from the perspective of phenomenology and at the molecular and atomic levels. The clarification of this interaction depends on the high level of development of the two disciplines of inorganic chemistry and biology. Due to the application of theoretical chemical methods and

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Metal protein:

For a class of proteins containing metal elements:

Ferritin includes hemoglobin,

Simulation of biological inorganic compounds

The function of bio-inorganic compounds containing metal elements can often be simulated with simpler metal complexes or the like.

Bioinorganic chemistry

Such compounds are called model compounds. Model compounds often have the structural characteristics of the system being simulated or have certain related biological activities. Through the study of model compounds, we can often understand the relationship between the structure of complex simulated systems and their functions. For example, a series of fence-type, cap-type, and tail-type heme have been synthesized. They do not have peptide chains, but can bind and release oxygen molecules reversibly like hemoglobin and myoglobin. Through the study of model compounds, we learned that heme must exist in a hydrophobic environment, and the surrounding steric effect is a condition to ensure that hemoglobin and myoglobin can reversibly bind to oxygen molecules, and the ferrous iron therein must not be oxidized to trivalent. Necessary structural factors. For another example, by studying the structure and properties of a series of copper-polypeptide coordination compounds, we learned that there is a distorted tetrahedral coordination around the copper atom in the blue-copper protein molecule, which makes the blue-copper protein have a significant blue and high reduction Potential. There are always differences between simulation systems and natural systems. Care must be taken when using the results of simulation systems to explain the structure, function, and mechanism of natural systems.

Inorganic ion bioprobe replaces the original metal elements in biological inorganic compounds with some other metal elements

Bioinorganic chemistry

In order to use various spectroscopic methods to study and determine the structure and function of the system. The metal ions used are called bioprobes. The metal ions used as a probe should have a similar radius to the original ions, and can maintain the structural characteristics and certain biological activity of the original system. For example, cobalt ions with a radius close to zinc are used as probes to replace zinc in carboxypeptidase, so that the coordination environment of zinc in carboxypeptidase is inferred from the spectrum of cobaltase; using manganese ions as probes, according to manganese The NMR spectrum of carboxypeptidase confirmed that zinc was linked to a water molecule or a hydroxyl group in carboxypeptidase.

Bioinorganic chemistry

Physiological functions of metal ions

Metal ions still have many important physiological functions in organisms. Metal ions are involved in cell division, muscle contraction, and transmission of nerve impulses. Metal ions play an important role in maintaining cell wall structure and strengthening lipoprotein membranes; metal ions also directly affect the structure of ribosomes, thereby affecting the normal process of protein synthesis.

The type and concentration of metal ions in the body will affect normal life activities, such as lack of iron, copper and cobalt in the body will cause anemia; excessive cadmium ions are related to the incidence of cardiovascular disease; excessive selenium is toxic to the body, but too low can cause viruses Induces cancer; congenital copper metabolism disorders can cause Wilson's disease.

In order to control the normal content of metal elements in the body, some metal chelating agents (see Chelation) are commonly used to eliminate excess metal elements in the body. For example, 1,2-dimercaptopropanol can exclude elements such as mercury, lead, and antimony; EDTA (ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid) can exclude many harmful elements and excess metals; penicillamine can treat Wilson's disease and so on. Some metal complexes have biological activities such as bactericidal, antiviral and anticancer. Among them, cis-dichlorodiammine platinum has a good effect on genitourinary cancer, it can inhibit the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) replication in cancer cells.