Understanding and Harnessing the Power of Metalloregulators and Metalloenzymes for Applications in Energy, Environment and Medicine

Metal ions play vital roles in regulation and catalytic transformation in numerous biological processes, including photosynthesis, respiration, global nitrogen, hydrogen and carbon cycles, biosynthesis of natural products such as antibiotics, genetic control, and neurotransmission. At the same time, many biological systems are exposed to toxic metal ions in the environment. Understanding both beneficial and detrimental effects of these metal ions in biology will allow us to harness the power of many metalloregulators and metalloenzymes and to design artificial proteins or synthetic models for many applications, such small molecular activation and transformation in sustainable energies and pharmaceuticals, environmental monitoring, bioremediations, and metal-based drugs. To achieve the goals, we need multiple disciplinary approaches to develop new methods to characterize the structures of metal-binding sites in proteins and nucleic acids and their regulation or reaction mechanisms, and then apply insights gained from the study to harness power of the native systems or design artificial systems.

The Metals in Biology GRC is the annual premier conference that brings scientists from diverse backgrounds and expertise in chemistry, physics, biochemistry, molecular biology, cellular biology and medicinal science to discuss recent progress in this field. To stimulate new directions of research and foster new collaborations among participants with complementary interests and skills, the conference has scheduled ample time after each lecture and during poster sessions to facilitate discussions in an open atmosphere.

The Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) in Bioinorganic Chemistry is closely associated with the MIB GRC. This meeting typically draws graduate and postdoctoral students from a variety of laboratories studying metals in biology. The GRS overlaps with the MIB GRC meeting for one evening session on Thursday, including a poster session that allows students to meet and interact with established scientists. 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.