Bioinorganic Chemistry
A Short Course
Chapter One
INORGANIC CHEMISTRY ESSENTIALS
1.1 INTRODUCTION
Bioinorganic chemistry involves the study of metal species in biological systems.
As an introduction to basic inorganic chemistry needed for understanding bioinorganic
topics, this chapter will discuss the essential chemical elements, the
occurrences and purposes of metal centers in biological species, the geometries
of ligand fields surrounding these metal centers, and the ionic states preferred by
the metals. Important considerations include equilibria between metal centers and
their ligands and a basic understanding of the kinetics of biological metal-ligand
systems. The occurrence of organometallic complexes and clusters in metalloproteins
will be discussed briefly, and an introduction to electron transfer in coordination
complexes will be presented. Because the metal centers under consideration
are found in a biochemical milieu, basic biochemical concepts, including a
discussion of proteins and nucleic acids, are presented in Chapter 2.
1.2 ESSENTIAL CHEMICAL ELEMENTS
Chemical elements essential to life forms can be broken down into four major
categories: (1) bulk eleme ... read full excerpt from Bioinorganic Chemistry: A Short Course ebook
