Biological Metals: Regulation, Catalysis, Medicine, the Environment and Chemical Evolution

Biological metal centers assume numerous important structural and functional roles in association with proteins and nucleic acids, adding chemical diversity to the limited number of amino acids and the even smaller number of nucleic acid bases. This augmented chemical diversity is enhanced by the variety of metal centers employed; including both redox-active and non-redox active metals, single metal binding sites, metals bound by organic cofactors, and multinuclear metal clusters. Understanding how metal ions function in these diverse systems requires multidisciplinary approaches across the broad fields of biology, physics, chemistry/biochemistry, and medicine. The MIB-GRC brings together scientists from diverse backgrounds to foster new collaborations that take advantage of complementary skills. Lectures in the 2017 MIB-GRC cover recent advances in our understanding of the roles of metalloproteins and metal/nucleic acid complexes in cellular signaling, metal ion regulation, and their effects on human health; the evolving biological chemistry of metals from the earth's deep past to the current environment, and metal-centered catalysis by a variety of metalloenzymes, including those crucial in the grand global cycles of hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. In addition to the lectures, poster sessions held to facilitate discussions in an open atmosphere are always a major highlight of the MIB-GRC.

The Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) in Bioinorganic Chemistry, chaired in 2017 by Lauren Rajakovich, is closely associated with the MIB GRC. This meeting typically draws graduate and postdoctoral students from a diverse array of laboratories studying metals in biology. It overlaps with the MIB GRC meeting for one evening session on Thursday, which includes a poster session that allows students to meet and interact with established scientists in their areas of research. We specifically encourage graduate students and postdocs to take advantage of these unique educational opportunities and to participate in either the MIB-GRC conference or the Bioinorganic Chemistry GRS or both.

Yi Lu will chair the 2018 MIB-GRC conference, and Marty Bollinger will chair the 2019 conference.